230 THE HISTORY OF GEOLOGY 



confidently avouch, Adderbury being only the vulgar 

 Name : for in the Court-Bolls of New College ... it is 

 written Eabberbury, perhaps from St. Ebba, the tutelar 

 Saint of the Church." 



The "Formed Stones" having been sufficiently 

 described, Dr. Plot proceeds to a discussion of " The 

 great Question now so much controverted in the World : 

 Whether the Stones we now find in the form of Shell-fish 

 be Lapides sui generis, naturally produced by some 

 extraordinary plastic virtue, latent in the Earth or 

 Quarries where they are found ? Or whether they rather 

 owe their Form and Figuration to the Shells of the Fishes 

 they represent, brought to the places where they are now 

 found by a Deluge, Earthquake or some other such 

 means, and then being filled with Mud, Clay, and petrify- 

 ing Juices, have in tract of time been turned into Stones, 

 as we now find them, still retaining the same Shape in 

 the whole, with the same Lineations, Sutures, Eminences, 

 Cavities, Orifices, Points that they had whilst they 

 were Shells ? " "In the handling thereof " the author 

 modestly disclaims any intention of arriving at a "per- 

 emptory Decision," and invites merely to "a friendly 

 Debate." Let no one be beguiled, however, by these 

 fair words, which are but the bow of a champion on 

 entering the arena. It is true the debate proceeds 

 smoothly enough, but it is also conducted according to 

 all the rules of fence and with the art of a master. 

 Steno's weakest point was the deluge, which he had to 

 bring over Tuscany in his final explanation of geologic 

 changes. Plot, with unerring instinct, makes straight 

 for this. He considers first the difficult question of the 

 means by which these fossils, if they were originally 

 parts of living animals, could have been transported from 

 the sea to the interior of the country : deluges had been 

 suggested, but with deluges, whether Noachian, Ogygian, 



