6 ORIGIN OF PALAEONTOLOGY. 



Ramazzini, 1 and Vallisneri, 2 could fail to become the universal creed 

 of geology. Palissy, the philosophic potter of France, published, in 

 I557, 3 from his own experience, the conclusion that fossil shells and 

 other "figured stones" were the genuine exuviae of ancient marine 

 animals. 



Progress of Palaeontology in England. In England, the great 

 interest which belonged to the thousands of fossil plants and animals, 

 was fully understood by Plot, Llwyd, Ray, Lister, Woodward, and 

 Moreton ; who by their rich collections, and publications, as well as 

 resolute though unsuccessful efforts to deduce the causes which had 

 thus buried and preserved imperishable in the earth organic remains 

 of a former period, undoubtedly kindled that ardent spirit of inquiry 

 respecting the structure of the earth, for which the English philo- 

 sophers of the seventeenth century were so honourably distinguished. 



Nevertheless, the progress of geology in England was* retarded by 

 the fettered condition of other sciences, and by a peculiarly unhappy 

 conjunction of truth and fiction. The correct view of the original 

 nature of " formed stones, or petrifactions," was coupled by Woodward 

 and his numerous followers with the assertion, that all the strata 

 superimposed on one another in the crust of the earth, with all their 

 included myriads of fossil animals and plants, were deposited by one 

 general flood, "the deluge !" 



One great merit, however, strikingly characterises the early English 

 school of geology, even in its greatest aberrations, a thorough con- 

 viction that the organic remains entombed in the earth were the 

 surest evidence of the revolutions which it had undergone. 



Lister. Through the research and learning of this industrious 

 and distinguished man, England was filled with collections of fossils, 

 which were compared with native and exotic living species, and 

 almost every naturalist of note from the time of Lister has contributed 

 something to the stock of information respecting them. Lister was 

 free from theoretical prejudice, had the merit of perceiving and of 

 recording in a single instance the principle of mutual dependence 

 between the strata and their organic remains, which afterwards, 

 generalised and promulgated by Smith, became the most important 

 instrument of investigation which has ever been presented to geology. 



Speaking of a small species of belemnite (B. Listen), which is 

 figured in his Historia Animaliwn Ancjlice, he says it is found in all 

 the cliffs as you ascend the wolds, for above a hundred miles in com- 

 pass, at Speeton, Londesbro', and Caistor, but always in a red, ferru- 

 ginous earth. This correct and remarkable result is a striking 

 example of the possibility of even holding in the hands a brilliant 

 discovery, without knowing its value, or taking any steps to ascertain 

 its importance. 



1 De Font. Mutin. Scat. ; b. 1633, d. 1714. His observations are quoted by 

 Vallisueri, Lazzaro Moro, Linnseus, &c. 



2 De Corp. Mar., and other works ; b. 1 66 1, d. 1730. 



3 Palissy's work was first printed at Lyons in 1557. The edition of 1580 

 usually referred to, was the third. 



