56 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
Scheuchzer should select the less scientific, but he was by no means the 
only scientist to be captivated by Woodward. Scheuchzer’s chief con- 
tribution to paleontology is an Herbarium Diluvianum (1709) in which 
there are many reproductions of fossil plants. Woodward had travelled 
widely to obtain his information, and Scheuchzer adopted a similar 
method, constantly seeking for proofs of the deluge, and, to his own 
satisfaction at any rate, discovering them. Woodward having found, 
from a study of fossil plants, that ‘there is so great an uniformity and 
general consent amongst them, that from it I was enabled to discover 
what time of the year it was that the deluge began; the whole tenour of 
these bodies thus preserved clearly pointing forth the month of May,’ 
Scheuchzer set out to emulate his avowed leader. In the very first plate 
and figure of his Herbarium he illustrates what he calls an ear of corn 
(actually it is a crinoid calyx with stem and arms attached). ‘ Now from 
the same pit’ (in a slate quarry in Mount Plattenberg, near Matt, Canton 
of Glarus, Switzerland, from which he had obtained fossil fishes) ‘ I 
present an ear of corn, a great rarity of nature, a genuine witness to the 
Universal Flood, and not only a sign of the event but also of the time it 
took place.’ Its plumpness, and yet its semi-mature condition, like that 
of certain filberts that were wrinkled and shrivelled, indicated that the 
flood took place about the middle of May. 
Scheuchzer, as has been noted, translated Woodward’s Essay into 
Latin and spread his ideas through Europe. By drawing attention to 
collecting evidence rather than relying on the criticism of literature, he, 
like Woodward, did an immense service for Geology. It is precisely by 
assembling new evidence that criticism must come. Woodward and 
Scheuchzer were both learned and honest observers. Their evidence 
might be read differently by their contemporaries, and indeed was so 
read, but their position had been attained by sound methods, and the 
popularity of the views they held indicates their reasonableness in the 
eyes of the general educated world of that day. 
The stimulation given to the collection of fossils soon bore fruit, and 
among the literature dealing with fossil plants in particular we may cite 
a paper by Leigh (1700) on the Natural History of Lancashire. He 
figured numerous examples, but considered them all inorganic. Parsons, 
in 1757, described a collection of fossil fruits from Sheppey made by 
Mr. Jacob of Faversham, surgeon. He defined what he meant by petri- 
factions thus: ‘ By being petrified is meant being impregnated with 
stony, pyritical, or any other metalline or sparry matter.’ In the course 
of his communication he recalls that Woodward thought the flood began 
in May, ‘ and yet this very opinion is liable to some objections ; because 
altho’ fruits, capable of being petrified, from their green state, may be 
pretty well formed in May here, as well as in the same latitude elsewhere, 
(and are) in favour of this opinion; yet there are the stones of fruits, 
found fossil, so perfect, as to make one imagine they were very ripe, when 
deposited in the places where they are discovered, which would induce 
one to think the deluge happened nearer Autumn, unless we could think 
them the productions of more southern latitudes, where perhaps their 
fruits are brought to perfection before ours are well formed.’ 
