68 WALKS AND TALKS. 



is a little shell three-quarters of an inch in diameter, and 

 closely coiled almost in a plane, like a watch spring. I have 

 been amused to hear some of these forms like bivalve shells 

 called " petrified butterflies." Through western New York, 

 Ontario, Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana we find in the Drift 

 innumerable masses popularly known as "petrified honey- 

 comb," and " petrified wasp-nest." There are also quantities 

 of little flat discs like " buttons," each with radiating striae 

 or other decorations, and having a hole in the middle, as if 

 intended to be strung like beads. These have sometimes been 

 styled " St. Cuthbert's beads." 



These curious forms, so much like animal structures, were 

 wondered over, hundreds of years ago. Very few persons 

 would then entertain the suggestion that they are real relics 

 of living things. They indeed bear the similitudes of marine 

 creatures ; but such they can not be, it was argued, because 

 they lie hundreds of feet above the sea. Some of the early 

 Italian writers attributed them to " the influence of the stars ;" 

 but Leonardo da Vinci demanded " where, in the hills, are the 

 stars now forming shells of distinct ages and species? And 

 how can the stars explain the origin of gravel, occurring at 

 different heights, and composed of pebbles rounded as if by 

 the motion of running water ?" Others attributed these forms 

 to the influence of a " plastic force" in nature. Agricola, a 

 German miner, conceived the notion that a " certain fatty 

 matter, set into fermentation by heat, gave birth to fossil or- 

 ganic shapes ;" Fallopio thought that petrified shells were gen- 

 erated by fermentation in the spots where they are found ; or 

 that they had, in some cases, acquired their form from the 

 "tumultuous movements of terrestrial exhalations." Olivi 

 thought fossils were mere "sports of nature," and some in- 

 dulged in the amusing fancy that they were "prototypes" or 

 " models" after which the Creator subsequently fashioned the 

 living creatures of the sea ; and others held that they were 

 "created" just as we find them. The last opinion I have 

 heard dogmatically asserted in America ; and probably it still 

 survives. 



