CH. XXVI GEOLOGY 215 



heard nothing more about observations of this kind. The 

 fact is, that during the Dark Ages the study of the earth had 

 been almost entirely neglected, and people had taken up the 

 mistaken notion that they ought to believe, as a matter of 

 faith, that the world was created in the beginning just as we 

 now see it. But knowledge and inquiry were advancing so 

 fast in the eighteenth century, that it was impossible for such 

 ignorance to continue long. People could not go on digging 

 wells and making mines in all parts of the world without 

 being struck by the way in which the different strata, or 

 layers of rock, are arranged in the earth's crust, nor without 

 noticing the fossil shells, plants, and bones of animals which 

 they found buried at great depths. 



At first they were very unwilling to believe that these 

 remains had ever belonged to living animals and plants, and 

 they tried to imagine that they were only stones resembling 

 shells, leaves, &c., which had been in some way mysteriously 

 created in the earth. Then, when this absurd idea was 

 given up, they next enquired whether a universal flood 

 might not have spread them over the land ; but though this 

 opinion was upheld for more than a hundred years, yet it 

 was clear to all those who really studied the subject that it 

 could not account for the many layers of fossils deeply 

 buried in the earth. 



First Attempts to study the Fossil Remains and the 

 beds containing them. — At last, little by little, there arose 

 men who adopted the more sensible plan of studying the 

 different formations in the crust of the earth before making 

 theories about them. Bernard de Palissy, the maker of the 

 famous French pottery, was the first to assert, in 1580, that 

 the fossil shells were real sea-shells left by the waters of the 

 ocean ; then, in 1 669, we find Steno, a Dane, writing a re- 



