54 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
I can only refer to those who come within the scope of my subject, and 
Robert Hooke, Martin Lister and John Woodward must absorb my 
attention. Hooke had applied the microscope to the study of fossils; 
and, in the first edition of Evelyn’s Sylva (1664), had described a piece 
of fossil wood after a microscopical examination. The following year 
(1665) he published that epoch-making volume Micrographia, figuring 
petrified wood, showing cellular structure, for the first time. The plate 
is poor, but he claims that by the discovery of its pores he produced a 
better argument for calling it fir than Stelluti had for calling similar 
bodies merely earth. Hooke contributed greatly to other branches of 
the subject, but it was over a hundred and fifty years before his contribu- 
tion to the microscopical study of fossil plants was advanced to a greater 
degree. He believed in the extinction of species; that volcanic action 
and earthquakes had changed the face of the earth, and that these could 
account for fossils being found in the heart of the mountains, and far 
above the level of their natural habitat ; and that it might be possible to 
“raise a chronology’ out of these records of nature—fossil shells.6 He 
considered that England must once have been in tropical latitudes, and 
speculated on shifts of the poles to explain that hypothesis. His ideas, 
indeed, involved crises in nature that appeared no less stupendous than 
those demanded by the diluvialists. ‘These views therefore were not 
accepted, nor even given the consideration they really deserved. Lister,® 
in 1673, published ‘a description of certain stones figured like plants, 
and by some observing men esteemed to be plants petrified.’ They were 
really crinoids, but Ray, commenting on them, says that the roots are a 
strong argument for their being ‘ pieces of vegetables’ and suggests that 
they were submarine plants. In 1692 La Hire’? described two specimens 
of petrified palm trees from Africa. He states ‘ there are people who say 
fossils are stones, and have never been other than stones, that resemble 
organisms, while some say that these fossils are petrified. There is 
reason on both sides. These two stones, however (referring to the 
fossil palm trees), are so similar to two pieces of wood that it cannot be 
pure chance that has produced two bodies so similar to two other specimens 
of such a different nature. It is evident that these petrifactions are far 
other than sports of nature that have imitated tree trunks.’ He also 
describes fossil wood sent by Father Duchatz from Ava near Mandalay, 
Burma, and considers that the wood was petrified by the waters of a 
nearby river as stated by that priest. ‘This is the earliest reference to 
the famous fossil trees from the Pegu Series on the banks of the Irrawadi. 
We can see therefore the belief in the organic nature of some fossils at any 
rate (and in this case fossil plants), replacing the old view. 
But the doctrines of John Woodward as enunciated in his Essay towards 
a Natural History of the Earth (1695) so coincided with the philosophy 
of his times that they were accepted enthusiastically. It is true that, at 
this time, Burnet’s Sacred History of the Earth (first published in Latin 
between 1680 and 1690) had a great vogue as a scientific textbook, although 
5 Hooke, Posthumous Works—Lecture, February, 1688. 
§ Lister, Phil. Tyans. Roy. Soc., vol. 8, No. 100, p. 6181. 
7 La Hire, Mém. Acad. des Sciences, Paris, vol. for 1692, p. 122. 
