20 



Toward the close of this century, Bauhin formed a copious col- 

 lection, and published the necessary descriptions of the petrified 

 shells, which were found near the baths of Boll. This descriptive 

 catalogue is to be found in his Historia novi et admirabilis Fontis 

 Balneique Bollensis, in Ducatu Wirtembergico. Montbeillard, 1598. 



About the same time Michael Mercatus wrote his Metallotheca 

 Vaticana, which was not, however, published until the year 1717? 

 when it was given to the public by Lancisius, physician to the pope. 

 The opinions of Mercatus not differing from those which prevailed 

 in the age in which he wrote, are not indeed very interesting ; but 

 the notes of Lancisius, and the figures, which are executed in a very 

 masterly manner, and which convey very accurate ideas of the 

 bodies they represent, render the work of value. 



In the seventeenth century, collections of fossils became much 

 more general. Only two catalogues of collections had hitherto ap- 

 peared, but now several very extensive ones were published. In 

 1622, appeared a copious description of the celebrated museum of 

 Calceolarius, of Verona; and twenty years after that was published 

 the catalogue of Besler's collection. In 1652 appeared Wormius's 

 catalogue ; in 1663 was published Spener's, and in 1666 Septala's. 

 An account of the museum of the king of Denmark was published 

 in 1669; in 1674 Cottorp's catalogue appeared; and in 1678 was 

 published that of the celebrated Kircher. In 1687 Dr. Grew wrote 

 an account of the curiosities, which were contained in the museum 

 of Gresham- College ; and, in the year 1695, appeared the catalogue 

 of Petiver, an apothecary, in London, who, at a vast expense, had 

 formed a most valuable collection. 



The earliest writer on these subjects, in this century, was Caspar 

 Schwenkfeld, who, in 1600, published a catalogue of the fossils dis- 

 covered in Silesia. But the most intelligent writer, of this period, 

 was Fabius Columna, who published, in l6l6, his treatise De Glos- 

 iS) a work of considerable merit, intended to correct the erro- 



