I'KEFACE. VU 



Messina possess a considerable number. He is mentioned in 

 many places in the works of Boccone the gi-eat naturalist with 

 wliom he travelled in Sicily. Scilla published in 1670 a book^ 

 the object of which was to prove by direct comparison, that 

 fossils were not, as many held in those days, merely accidental 

 forms or freaks of nature, but really the remains of organisms 

 which had lived, died, and been buried in the mud and sand. 

 With a view to proving this, he collected fossil and recent 

 shells, bones, etc., and made excellent pencil sketches of some 

 of the specimens in his collection, from which the figures 

 in his work were drawn. The collection itself was acquired 

 by Dr Woodward, and the University now possesses, not only 

 the very specimens upon which Scilla based his observations, 

 but also the original drawings which he made for the en- 

 graver. Dr Woodward highly prized these drawings for he 

 wrote on the fly leaf of the copy of the work with which they 

 were bound up 



"Liber ingentis Pretii quippe qui exhibet Archetypas Fossilium 

 Imagines, ipsius Augustini Scillse, prseclari Pictoris, prime 

 Messanse, exinde Romse, insigni Penicillo delineatas." 



This book, with the original drawings, I found behind a case 

 in the Woodwardian Museum, its very existence having been 

 previously unknown. 



Our own countryman Lister did not share the views of the 

 Sicilian, and in 1688 published a work containing an article 

 ' De Conchitis sive Lapidibus qui quandam similitudinem cum 

 coDchis marinis habeant.' We have the original fine specimen 

 of Productus giganteus, which he looked upon as only a piece of 

 stone having an accidental resemblance to a marine shell. 



In the works of Dr Woodward very few fossils are figured, 

 though many are described, and points of interest and of 

 controversy in his time are referred to and illustrated by the 

 specimens in his cabinets. For example, I remember the late 



' La Vana speculazione disingannata dal senso, etc., Naples 1670. A Latin 

 translation was published in Borne in 1747, and later editions in 1752 and 1759. 



