EASTMAN : DESCRIPTIONS OF BOLCA FISHES. 7 



have not attracted the attention amongst geologists and palaeontologists 

 -which they deserve. An idea may be formed of the nature of his ob- 

 servations from the following extracts, translated literally from his 

 published manuscripts : — 



"All marine clays still contain shells, and the shells are petrified together 

 with the clay. From their firmness and unity some persons will have it that 

 these animals were carried up to places remote from the sea by the deluge. 

 Another set of ignorant persons declare that Nature or Heaven created then) 

 in these places by celestial influences, as if in these places we did not also find 

 the bones of fishes which have taken a long time to grow ; and as if we could 

 not count, in the shells of cockles and snails, the periods of their growth, as we 

 do in the horns of bulls and oxen." — Leic. MS. 10 a. 



"And if you were to say that these shells were created, and were continually 

 being created in such places by the nature of the spot, and of the heavens 

 which might have some influence there, such an opinion cannot exist in a brain 

 of much reason; because here we find [lines denoting] annual growth num- 

 bered on their shells, and there are large and small shells to be seen which 

 could not have grown without food, and could not have fed without motion, — 

 and here they could not move." — Leic. MS. 9 b. 



"As to those who say that shells existed for a long time and were formed 

 at a distance from the sea from the nature of the place and of the cycles, which 

 can influence a place to produce such creatures, — to them it must be answered : 

 such an influence could not place the animals all on one level, except those of 

 the same sort and age; and not the old with the young, nor some with an 

 operculum and others without their operculum, nor some broken and others 

 whole, nor some filled with sea-sand and large and small fragments of other 

 shells inside the whole shell, which remained open; nor the claws of crabs 

 without the rest of their bodies, nor the shells of other species adhering to 

 them like animals which have moved about on them, since the impressions 

 of their tracks still remain on the outside, after the manner of worms in the 

 wood which they ate into. Nor would there be found among them the bones 

 and teeth of fish which some call arrows and others serpents' tongues, nor 

 would so many portions of various animals be found all together if they had 

 not been thrown on the sea-shore." — Leic. MS. 9 a. 



J. P., The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci, compiled and edited from tlie 

 original manuscripts, II. eliap. vi. London, 1883. — L^zzieili, G., Leonardo da Vinci 

 e le Alpi. Turin, 1890. — Venturi, G. B., Essai sur les ouvrages pliysicomathema- 

 tiques de Le'onard de Vinci. Paris, 1797. — Wliewell, W., History of the Inductive 

 Sciences, II. London, 1847. — Wiiite, A.D., History of the Warfare of Science with 

 Tlieology, I. New York, 1896. The most sumptuously published of all Leonardo's 

 writings is the Codex Atlantlnis of the Anibrosian library in Milan, wliich has re- 

 cently been reproduced in facsimile under the auspices of the Regia Accademia dei 

 Lincei. 



