MODERN SCIENCE. 159 



species were variable, why were not the genera, the orders, 

 the classes, likewise variable and interchangeable at will ? 

 Vaccination would have been ridiculed by them, because 

 it could prevent one disease only, and not all diseases. 

 Botany would have been declared useless so long as it did 

 not teach us how to grow Brussels sprouts on rose-trees ; 

 besides which, modern classifications have a suspicious look 

 of Aristotelian nonsense about them which makes science 

 too ancient to be worthy of attention. 



These, or arguments of the same kind, were used against 

 real science at as late a period as the end of the Revival even 

 by men of talent and fame. We mention them for the pur- 

 pose of showing the gulf which then separated prejudice from 

 science, and which now separates those times from ours. 



It is not unnecessary to lay a stress on the fact 

 that many of the immense results enumerated in the last 

 twenty or thirty pages flow with unmistakable directness from 

 Harvey's splendid discoveries and principles. 



GROUP II. GEOLOGY. 



Passing now to Geology, we find : 



1665 1728. Woodward collected (1695) numerous SPECI- 

 MENS of coal, gravel, marble, chalk, sandstone and other 

 rocks. Besides the early students of this branch of science 

 already mentioned Pythagoras, Leonardo, Palissy, Steno, 

 and Scilla Ray and Hooke had also paid much attention 

 to it, both offering suggestions regarding the causes of the 

 earth's crust being made up of successive strata. Ray also 

 pointed out that a mere flood could not deposit fossil remains 

 in extensive beds in the regions where they were found, and 

 that there was evidence that the animals must have lived on 

 the different areas for many successive generations. But with 

 Woodward begins a new departure. He was not content 

 to speculate, he made collections of rocks exhibiting fossils 

 with a view to investigate more deeply. Still, his action 

 going no further, there was no certainty as regards the 

 process of geological formation until Moro and Vallisneri 

 (both Italians) began a series of steady observations. 



