34 



EARLY ITALIAN WRITERS. 



[Ch. III. 



that certain tusks of elephants, dug up in his time in Apulia, 

 were mere earthy concretions ; and, consistently with these 

 principles, he even went so far as to consider it probable, 



Monte Testaceo at Rome 



*■ 



Mercati 



pressions stamped in the soil, 

 who published, in 1574, faithful figures of the fossil shells 

 preserved by Pope Sixtus V. in the Museum of the Vatican, 

 expressed an opinion that they were mere stones, which had 

 assumed their peculiar configuration from the influence of 

 the heavenly bodies : and Olivi of Cremona, who described 

 the fossil remains of a rich museum at Verona, was satisfied 

 with considering them as mere c sports of nature.' 



Some of the fanciful notions of those times were deemed 

 less unreasonable, as being somewhat in harmony with the 

 Aristotelian theory of spontaneous generation, then taught 



t 



men 



youth, that a large proportion of living animals and plants 



the fortuitous concourse of atoms, or had 



om 



sprung from the corruption of organic matter, might easily 

 persuade themselves, that organic shapes, often imperfectly 

 preserved in the interior of solid rocks, owed their existence 

 to causes equally obscure and mysterious. 



Cardano, 1552. — But there were not wanting some who, 

 during the progress of this century, expressed more sound and 

 sober opinions. The title of a work of Cardano's, published in 

 1552, ' De Subtilitate ' (corresponding to what would now be 

 called Transcendental Philosophy) , would lead us to expect, in 

 the chapter on minerals, many far-fetched theories character- 

 istic of that age ; but when treating of petrified shells, he 

 decided that they clearly indicated the former sojourn of the 



mountains.! 



Cesalpino — Majo U 



Cesalpino, a celebrated botanist, 



conceived that fossil shells had been left on the land by the 

 retiring sea, and had concreted into stone during the consolida- 

 tion of the soil; § and in the following year (1597), Simeone 

 Majoli|| 





went 



still farther ; and, coinciding for the 



most 



* De Fossilib. pp. 109 and 176. 

 f Aristotle, On Animals, chapters 1. 

 and 15. 



t Erocchi, Con. Fos. Subap. Disc, sui 



Progressi dello studio, vol. i. p. 6. 



De Metalhcis. 

 Dies Caniculares. 



