202 SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN MIND 



ground by the Devil, the better to test the faith of 

 mankind. 



Some knowledge of rocks, metals and minerals 

 had been acquired in the processes of mining at very 

 early dates; but, although Leonardo da Vinci and 

 Bernard Palissy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 

 had recognized in fossils the remains of animals and 

 plants, they were generally regarded as lusus natura, 

 and the products of a mysterious vis plastica, or a 

 tendency in nature to produce certain favourite 

 forms in various ways. The large collections of 

 James Woodward (1665-1772), which form the basis 

 of the geological collections of the University of 

 Cambridge, did much to establish the view that 

 fossils were really of animal and vegetable origin, 

 but their use in telling the tale of the earth was 

 not understood, save by scattered observers like 

 Nicolaus Stensen (1669), whose ideas gained no general 

 acceptance. Attempts made to explain how the 

 earth reached its present state were still forced into 

 accordance with the Biblical accounts of Creation and 

 the Deluge, or were based on purely speculative cosmo- 

 gonies involving cataclysmic origins by water or fire. 



The first systematically to contend against these 

 views was James Hutton (1726-1797), who published 

 his Theory of the Earth in 1785. Once more a direct 

 observation of nature and natural processes paved the 

 way for scientific advance. Hutton, in order to im- 

 prove the husbandry on his small paternal estate in 

 Berwickshire, studied farming in Norfolk, and methods 

 of agriculture in Holland, Belgium and Northern 

 France. During fourteen years he pondered over the 

 familiar ditches, pits and river beds, and then, returning 



