INTRODUCTION. 15 



surface of the land, and would not have been buried deep in 

 the earth where the quarrymen had found them. There was 

 left, he continued, only one possible explanation that the 

 fossils were the remains of animals which had once lived in the 

 localities where their remains are now imbedded. 



Far more illustrious than the majority of his contemporaries 

 in science was George Bauer, 1 better known by his nom-de- 

 plume of Agricola. Werner calls him the father of metallurgy, 

 and the originator of the critical study of minerals. Bauer's stay 

 in Joachimsthal enabled him to become familiar with the mines 

 there, and to make a collection of local minerals. The clever 

 physician soon received general recognition as the best 

 authority on mining, and the publication of his pamphlet 

 " Bermannus " in 1528 further confirmed the prominent 

 position he held among mineralogists. His great work, De re 

 metallica libri duodedm^ contains a complete description of 

 mining and metallurgy as then practised, as well as valuable 

 communications about the mode of occurrence of useful 

 minerals, and about veins and deposits of ore. Two later 

 works, De natura fossilium^ Lib. x., and De veferibus et novis 

 metallis, Lib. ii., describe all the minerals known to the ancients, 

 and all those which had since been discovered. Agricola's 

 observations on crystalline form, cleavage, hardness, weight, 

 colour, lustre, etc., have served as a model for all subsequent 

 descriptions of minerals. On the other hand, Agricola's 

 remarks about fossils are of much less value. He had devoted 

 little attention to the fossil remains of animals and plants, and ' 

 he unfortunately united under the name " Fossilia " both 

 minerals and petrified organisms. This use of 'the term 

 " Fossils " was perpetuated for two centuries in the literature, 

 having been more especially adopted by the famous Wernerian 

 School. Agricola referred by far the greater part of the organic 

 remains found in the solid rock to a wholly inorganic origin; 

 he regarded fossil mussels, belemnites, "Ammon's Horns," 

 " Glossopetra " (fish teeth), and other problematical remains as 



1 Georg Bauer (Agricola) was born at Glauchau in Saxony in 1494. lie 

 went to Italy, where he graduated as doctor, and then settled in Joachims- 

 thai as a physician; afterwards he was appointed professor of chemistry at 

 Chemnitz, and died there 1555. A complete edition of his works was 

 published in the Latin tongue in Bale. A German translation of the 

 mineralogical writings was published at Freiburg in 1816 by Ernst 

 Lehmann. 



