94 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY AND PAL/EONTOLOGY. 



which De Saussure and Escher von der Linth had given of the 

 grand crust movements that had inverted rock -strata and 

 developed the fan-structure of the mountain-massives of the 

 central chain. The bolder thoughts of these men escaped 

 him. 



In addition to the larger works on Alpine geology by 

 Von Buch and Ebel, a number of smaller treatises on Alpine 

 localities were contributed to mineralogical journals. Amongst 

 these were papers by Italian geologists directing attention to 

 the interesting geological phenomena in the Fassa Valley and 

 Predazzo in South Tyrol ; a description by Mohs of the Villach 

 Alps ; works by Charpentier and others on the Wallis Alps; and 

 by several French geologists on the Maritime Alps and several 

 parts of the Dauphind 



C. Italy. The interest of Italian geologists was early 

 attracted to the richly fossiliferous Tertiary strata. Arduino's 

 epoch-making works on the stratigraphical succession in the 

 neighbourhood of Verona have been mentioned above (p. 37). 

 The travelled Alberto Fortis (1741-1803), an Augustine monk, 

 was an acute observer and a prolific writer on geological 

 subjects. His works are for the most part descriptive of the 

 Tertiary deposits and volcanic rocks in the Vicentine Alps ; 

 Monte Bolca, a locality long famous for its fossils, was 

 thoroughly searched by Fortis, and he discovered several new 

 localities of well-preserved fossils (Brendola, San Vito, Gran- 

 cona). 



Fortis compared the fossil fishes of Monte Bolca with exist- 

 ing species in the southern seas, and concluded that six or 

 seven species were identical. This opinion was shared by 

 Volta, in whose splendid monograph of the Monte Bolca 

 fishes (1788) the number of fossil forms identical with living 

 species is increased to one hundred and ten. Possibly the 

 best contribution made to science by Fortis was his work 

 on the geological structure of Dalmatia, and his account of 

 the occurrence of nummulites at Bencovac and Sebenico, of 

 bone breccias at Cherso, etc. 



In regard to the origin of basalt and tuffs, Fortis was an 

 extreme Volcanist ; he even believed that the volcanic energy 

 of the Vicentine area had raised the temperature of the Adri- 

 atic Sea to such a degree that tropical molluscs and fishes 

 could then exist in it. 



