GEOLOGY. 587 



No slight trouble had to be taken in order to hammer the 

 truth into the refractory brains of some savants. The first 

 who had the courage to do this was a potter, poor in for- 

 tune, but great in genius. It was Bernard Palissy who in 

 his lowly state taught a lesson to the doctors of Paris, and 

 showed them that the shells which are found in the soil 

 were carried thither by the sea, which of old occupied the 

 place where we find them. It was this humble and fer- 

 vent man who thus became the founder of positive geolog3 r . 



But whilst the different fossiliferous rocks were being de- 

 posited, whilst the earth was renewing its living races, plu- 

 tonic forces, in ceaseless agitation, from time to time shook 

 the crust of the globe, or fractured it in various places. Its 

 fragments formed our mountains, and these, issuing from 

 the depths of the seas, bore aloft to the regions of the 

 clouds the charnel-houses of the animals which had for- 

 merly peopled their abysses. 



When Buffon, in his turn, came to the support of the 

 view that the shells scattered over the summits of the Alps 

 and Apennines only proved that the globe had undergone 

 convulsions, he found himself contradicted where no person 

 could have expected it. This was by Voltaire, who, in his 

 " Physique," attacked with biting sarcasm those who adopted 

 this opinion. He maintained that all the shells found on 

 our mountains had been scattered there by pilgrims on their 

 return from Rome. 1 Only a few words were needed to have 



1 The idea of ascribing to the pilgrims from Rome the fossil shells found in 

 the mountains was not long upheld by the philosopher of Ferney. He shrank 

 from the idea of seriously embroiling himself with the illustrious overseer of the 

 Jardin de Plantes. " I do not," he said, " wish to quarrel with M. Buffon about 

 shells." Voltaire, Physique, chap, xv., " Des Singularites de la Nature." 



