C.—GEOLOGY 51 
science made no progress. Doubtless many fossil plants and animals 
were discovered, but no record of them has been preserved to us. 
MeEpizzvaL IDEAS ON Fossil PLANTS. 
In the Middle Ages fossils, both plant and animal, were regarded, for 
_ the most part, as produced by inorganic agencies in the earth itself. 
_ Mr. W. N. Edwards, in his Guide to an Exhibition illustrating the early 
history of Palzontology, has made an interesting suggestion in regard to 
the reason for this. He considers that it may have arisen ‘ from a mis- 
understanding of the explanations of fossils’ given by Avicenna. ‘The 
quotation from Albertus Magnus (1193 ?-1280) in De Mineralibus et rebus 
metallicis, describing certain stones like animals, runs : ‘ And the cause 
of this is, according to Avicenna, that animals themselves in their entirety 
are sometimes changed into stones, and especially into salty stones. For 
he says that just as earth and water are the material of stones, so also are 
animals, which, when they pass into places in which the stone-forming 
essence is given forth to the elements, are seized by the properties of those 
qualities which are in such places. The elements in the bodies of the 
animals are changed into the ruling element, namely, the earthy mixed 
with the aqueous, and then the mineral virtue changes that into stone, 
and they retain their figures and parts both within and without as before.’ 
This might appear to be a crude description of petrification, after 
burial by natural causes in the earth, in suitable conditions, and not a 
statement that fossils were produced in the earth by some stone-forming 
essences. Yet the latter doctrine seems to have held the field. 
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) ridiculed the idea, as also did Fracastoro 
in 1517, but it persisted, and we find Agricola in his De natura fossilium 
(1548) adopting two views. He believed that some materia pinguis or 
fatty matter produced organic shapes by fermentation, but he also thought 
that plants and animals could be turned into stone by a succus lapidescens. 
Andrea Mattioli two years later (1548) described fossil fishes from Monte 
Bolca, and, from his own observations, believed that bones, etc., could be 
turned into stone by absorbing such a lapidifying juice ; in modern phrase- 
ology by ground water containing mineral matter in solution. Yet not 
until the eighteenth century was the notion that these were merely /usus 
naturae, lapides figurati, or lapides sui generis finally killed by ridicule. 
Now fossil animals, rather than plants, have figured in these discus- 
sions, and Brongniart has suggested that the explanation can be found in 
the fact that coal was not in such demand because of the abundance of 
timber in Europe, and consequently the principal repositories of fossil 
plants had not been explored: but that cannot excuse workers in this 
country at all events. The earliest coal lease, for the commercial exploita- 
tion of coal, was granted between 1210 and 1219 to the monks of New- 
battle, Midlothian, by a Seyer de Quinci, as is recorded by Cochrane- 
Patrick,® while the Newcastle coalfield was working in 1239 under a charter 
of Henry III. It is inconceivable that the miners were unacquainted with 
3 Cochrane-Patrick, Records of Mining in Scotland. 
