136 Repokt of the State Gteologist. 



Fea^soatabo (1517) is the first who affirmed that fossils had 

 really b^en living creatures. Cardan, Cesalpi^^, Bernard 

 Palissy (1680), admit that the ocean must formerly have covered 

 the mountains. Colonna had the merit of making a distinction 

 between marine and land shells. Steno, a famous Danish 

 anatomist who lived in Florence, pointed out the identity of the 

 teeth of living and fossil sharks, and discovered a fresh-water 

 fauna (1669). All these learned men are pronounced defenders 

 of the diluvial theory. Their tendencies are clearly explained, 

 as Lyell ingeniously suggests, by the character of the fossils 

 which are found in the museums of Italy; these, in general, 

 belong to the upper Tertiary, and are very analogous to the 

 animals at present living on the sea coast of Italy. Opinion 

 in England, on the contrary, took an entirely different direction ; 

 the fossils found there belong in general to more ancient deposits, 

 and the writers of the time saw no analogy between them and 

 any living species. Thus Hooke (1668) for example, is one of the 

 defenders of the theory of the extinction of fossil forms. 



With the beginning of the eighteenth century Palaeontology 

 enters a new phase of existence ; the rocks containing fossil 

 remains were everywhere made an object of especial study, and 

 were classified according to their order of superposition; cata- 

 logues were made of the fossils characteristic of each deposit, 

 and an attempt made to form an idea of the relative epochs of 

 the appearance of each type. Woodward (1695) has the merit 

 of beiDg the first in England to essay a methodical study 

 of this kind. 'The same work was done in Italy by Yal. 

 isNEEi. The example of these men was afterward followed 

 in Germany by Lehmann, who established the difference between 

 the azoic and the fossiliferous deposits (1756). In 1780 Soldani 

 conceived the first idea of the distinction between the deep- 

 sea fauna and the littoral fauna. He separated the marine 

 and the fresh-water fossils in the Paris basin. Finally William 

 Smith (1790) established an excellent classification of the deposits 

 of England according to the fossils they contained. 



In Germany geologists were lurned away from the study of 

 fossils by the brilliant teachings of Werner, which acquired 

 great repute. This scientist and his followers occupied them- 



