ARGUMENT FROM ANALOGY 231 



Deucalonian, or purely local or national floods, Plot will 

 have no dealings, alleging very sufficient reasons for 

 regarding all deluges as unfitted, by their very nature, 

 for the effects required; while as to earthquakes, he 

 remarks, that to suppose " the Mountains (where such 

 Stones as most resemble them [shell-fish] are now found) 

 were heretofore low places and since raised by Earth- 

 quakes : [is] a thing by no means to be believed of our 

 Northern Parts, where the Earthquakes we have at any 

 time are so inconsiderable that they scarce sometimes 

 are perceived, much less affrighten us ; unless we shall 

 groundlessly grant, that in the infancy of the World, the 

 Earth suffered more concussions, and consequently more 

 mutations in its Superficies, than it has done ever since 

 the Records of Time": an argument that cannot but 

 appeal to every orthodox Uniformitarian. 



Having thus shown an antecedent improbability 

 against the view that fossils are the remains of organisms, 

 he proceeds to attack the enemy in his stronghold. It is 

 affirmed, Dr. Plot remarks, that "these Formed Stones 

 are many of them in all repects, like the living Shell-fish : 

 thus says Boccone, the Herrison's Spatagi of Stone, the 

 Cornua Ammonis or Nautili Lapides have the very Marks, 

 Characters, Eminences, Cavities and all other parts alike, 

 with the true living Nautili, and Herrison's Spatagi, 

 . . . which proves, says he, the Body changed to have 

 been the very same thing with that which is living. But 

 I must tell him, it does but very weakly, all Arguments 

 drawn a similitudine, being the most inefficacious of all 

 others, such rather illustrating than proving, rather per- 

 swading than compelling an Adversary's Assent. For 

 how many hundred things are there in the World, that 

 have some Resemblance of one Another, which no Body 

 will offer to think were ever the same, and particularly 

 among some other Formed Stones hereafter to be men- 



