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C.—GEOLOGY 53 
INTERPRETATION OF FossIL PLANTS IN THE SIXTEENTH AND 
SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES. 
The greatest influence in the sixteenth century in geological philosophy 
was undoubtedly exercised by Georg Bauer, [Agricola] (1494-1555). His 
personality and his scientific attainments, both in the fields of theory and 
practice, place him far above all others. He was a man entirely devoid of 
bigotry, and took up the very common-sense view that some ‘fossils’ are 
inorganic, but some are remains of plants and animals. Gradually the 
organic nature of fossils was established as a principle of scientific philo- 
sophy. Palissy, whose collection contained ‘ more than a hundred pieces 
of wood turned into stone,’ dared to assert in Paris in 1580 that fossil 
fishes had once lived, that they had not been deposited by a universal 
deluge, and that many of the fossils were different from living types. For 
his liberal views Palissy died miserably in the Bastille. Others, of the 
Italian scientists, put forward many theories, but, on the whole, defended 
the Noah’s flood hypothesis. 
It is perhaps unfortunate for my general thesis that the first treatise 
on pure palzobotany by Stelluti, in 1637, should have been one of the 
reversions to the inorganic origin of fossils. His work has many plates— 
excellent for their time—but his words are retrograde. ‘ The generation 
then of this wood as far as I have been able to see, and to observe carefully, 
does not proceed from seeds nor from roots of any plant, but merely from 
a species of earth which is rich in clay, which little by little must be 
changed into wood ; in this way nature works until all that remains is 
converted into wood ; it is in this way I believe with the aid of some 
subterranean fires, such as there are in some places, which go winding 
about underground and give off from time to time a fairly thick smoke, 
and at times flames, especially in rainy weather, and also with the addi- 
tional assistance of sulphurated and mineral waters.’ 
Others write in what we would call a more progressive tone; and 
Steno, the Dane, a professor in Padua, published in 1669 a work of the 
very first importance. He enunciated the law of superposition of strata ; 
the original horizontality of beds ; and that high dip of beds connoted earth 
movement. He distinguished between marine beds containing shells, 
and fluviatile beds with reeds, grasses and branches of trees. But he was 
anxious to reconcile his discoveries with Scripture, and put forward many 
ideas with that end in view ; ideas sometimes plagiarised by others at a 
later date. 
Quirini in 1676 showed that Noah’s flood could not have moved heavy 
bodies to the extent that was assumed, since Boyle had shown that wave 
action did not continue to any depth. Quirini also contended that Noah’s 
flood could not have been universal. The period indeed was one of great 
interest ; new observations involving new philosophical ideas that directly 
opposed doctrines, as Lyell says, ‘ sanctioned by the implicit faith of many 
generations, and supposed to rest on scriptural authority.’ 
We now reach the time when British workers begin to take a more 
important part in the development of natural science. John Aubrey, 
Martin Lister, Robert Plot were all men of the very highest repute, but 
