Ch. III.] 



PALISSY.— FABIO COLONNA. 



35 





ul 



k 



#-■ 





i 



part with the views of Cesalpino, suggested that the shells 



of the Veronese, and other districts. 



matter 



mi 



» have been cast up upon the land by volcanic ex- 

 plosions, like those which gave rise, in 1538, to Monte 



x near Puzzuoli. This hint seems to have been the 



Nuo^v 



first imperfect attempt to connect the position of fossil shells 



more 



developed by Hooke, Lazzaro Moro, Hutton, and other 

 writers. 



Two years afterwards, Imperati advocated the animal 

 origin of fossil shells, yet admitted that stones could vegetate 



by force of ' an internal principle ; ' and, as evidence of 

 this, he referred to the teeth of fish and spines of echini 

 found petrified.* 



Palissy, 1580. — Palissy, a French writer on 'The Origin of 

 Springs from Rain-water/ and of other scientific works, under- 

 took, in 1580, to combat the notions of many of his contem- 

 poraries in Italy, that petrified shells had all been deposited 

 by the universal deluge. ' He was the first/ said Fontenelle, 

 when, in the French Academy, he pronounced his eulogy, 

 nearly a century and a half later, ' who dared assert/ in Paris, 

 that fossil remains of testacea and fish had once belonged to 

 marine animals. 



Fabio Golonna. — To enumerate the multitude of Italian 

 writers, who advanced various hypotheses, all equally fantas- 

 tical, in the early part of the seventeenth century, would be un- 

 profitably tedious ; but Fabio Colonna deserves to be distin- 

 guished ; for, although he gave way to the dogma, that all 

 fossil remains were to be referred to the deluge of Noah, he 

 resisted the absurd theory of Stelluti, who taught that fossil 

 wood and ammonites were mere clay, altered into such forms 

 by sulphureous waters and subterranean heat ; and he pointed 

 out the different states of shells buried in the strata, distin- 

 guishing between, first, the mere mould or 



lmpressu 

 remains 



the shell itself. He 



some of the fossils had belonged to marine 



some to terrestrial testacea. t 



* Storia Naturale. 



f Osserv. sugli Animali aquat. e terrest. 1626. 



I>2 



