ORYCTOLOGY. 



pails. In the pyramids of Egypt, men- 

 tioned by this author, and which had been 

 built at so early a period that no satisfac- 

 tory accounts could be derived from tra- 

 dition respecting 1 their erection, the 

 stones were found to contain the remains 

 of marine animals, and particularly of such 

 as exist no longer in a recent state, and 

 differ essentially from all known animals. 

 These were supposed by Strabo, who saw 

 the fragments of these stones laying 

 around the pyramids, to be the petrified 

 remains of the lentils which had been 

 used for food by the workmen. Eratos- 

 thenes, Xanthus of Lydia, and Strabo, 

 have all noticed and variously commented 

 upon the existence of animal remains thus 

 wonderfully preserved. In the works of 

 Pliny many fossil bodies are mentioned ; 

 particularly the bucardia, resembling an 

 ox's heart, but which was doubtlessly a 

 cast formed in a bivalve shell ; glossope- 

 tra, bearing the form of a tongue, and sup- 

 posed to full from the moon, when in its 

 wane ; hammites, resembling the spawn 

 offish; horns of ammon, resembling, in 

 form, the ram's-horn ; lepidotes, like the 

 scales of fishes ; meconites, bearing a re- 

 semblance to the seeds of poppies ; bron- 

 tia, to the head of a tortoise ; spongites, 

 to sponge ; phy cites, to sea-weeds or 

 rushes, &c. Although many were con- 

 vinced, by the exact resemblance which 

 several of these substances bore to differ- 

 ent species of marine animals, that these 

 must be the remains of such animals, and 

 must have been deposited on these spots, 

 ut a period when they were covered by 

 the sea ; others, unable to comprehend a 

 circumstance so inexplicable as the exist- 

 ence of the sea over some of the highest 

 mountains, chose rather to have recourse 

 to an apparently more easy mode of ex- 

 planation, by attributing their formation 

 to the energies of certain occult powers, 

 such as the vis plastic a, visformativa, and 

 vis lapidificativa. 



The formation of these bodies was also 

 attributed, by our countryman, Dr. Plot, 

 to certain plastic powers inherent in some 

 saline bodies ; and Dr. Woodward, one 

 of our latest writers on these substances, 

 although aware that the situations, in 

 which these, bodies were found, could 

 only be explained by the powerful and 

 extensive effects of the deluge, found 

 himself obliged also to have recourse to 

 an occult plastic power, to explain the 

 formation of some of these substances. 

 " There are," he observes, " various phe- 

 nomena that plainly shew that, when they 

 were brought forth at the deluge, the 



earth was destroyed, all the solids of it, 

 metals, minerals, stone, and the rest, dis- 

 solved, taken up into the water, and there 

 sustained along with the sea-shells, and 

 other extraneous bodies ; till at length all 

 settled down again, and formed the strata 

 of the present earth. The shells, and 

 other extraneous bodies, being thus lodg- 

 ed among this stony and other mineral 

 matters, that afterwards became solid : 

 when this comes now to be broke up, it 

 exhibits impressions of the shells, and 

 other bodies lodged in it ; showing even 

 the hardest of it to have been once in a 

 state of solution, soft, and susceptible of 

 impression." (Preface to Catalogue of 

 English Fossils, p. 3.) But unable other- 

 wise to oppose the opinion of Dr. Butt- 

 ner, that the fossil corals were actually 

 corals which had existed before the flood, 

 he had recourse to the supposition of their 

 having derived their forms from a second 

 arrangement of their component parts, 

 whilst in the waters of the deluge. " I 

 have seen," he says, " fossil coralloids 

 that have been composed of various sorts 

 of mineral and metallic matter, that yet 

 have been formed into shape of the ma- 

 rine mycetitx, astroitae, and other like 

 corals. Now all these have been formed 

 out of the dissolved mineral and metallic 

 matter in the water of the deluge. The 

 antediluvian corals were like all other 

 solid stony bodies then in solution in that 

 water, and might concrete again and form 

 true corals there as well as in the sea wa- 

 ter. Doubtless it did so ; but that matter 

 was in so small a quantity, and bore so 

 little a proportion to the mineral and me- 

 tallic, with which it was then mixed and 

 confused, as now rarely, if ever, to be met 

 with." (Letters on Fossils, by Dr. Wood- 

 ward, p. 82.) At present, no one hesi- 

 tates at considering all organized fossil 

 bodies as having existed during a former 

 state of this globe, and having- been then 

 endued with the energies of vegetable 

 or animal life. 



Various appellations have been employ- 

 ed for the purpose of distinguishing these 

 bodies from those minerals which do not 

 owe their forms to animal or vegetable 

 organization. 



Figured stones (lapides jigurati et icUo- 

 morpht) and diluvian stones (lapides dilu- 

 viani) were terms well chosen by the 

 earlier mineralogists to designate these 

 bodies, of the peculiar forms of which, 

 and of iheir having probably obtained 

 those forms from some changes depend- 

 ing on the deluge, they only could, with 

 any propriety, speak. The term fossil 



