526 O. C. Marsh—History and Methods of 
The Romans added but little to the knowledge possessed by 
the Greeks in regard to fossil remains. Pliny (23-79 A. D), 
however, seems to have examined such —— with interest, 
and in his renowned work on Natural History gave names 
to several forms. He doubtless borrowed largely from Theo- 
hrastus, who wrote about three hundred years before. Among 
the objects named by Pliny were, “ Bucardia, like to an ox’s 
he “ Brontia, resembling the head of a tortoise, —— 
to fall in thunder storms 3” “Glossoptra, similar to a human 
tongue, which does not grow in the earth, but falls from 
ent while the moon is eclipsed ;” “the Tora of Ammon, 
ssessing, with a golden color,’ the figure of a ram’s horn ;” 
Daas unia and Ombria, supposed to be thunderbolts ; Ostra- 
cites, resembling the oyster shell ; Spongites, having the form 
of sponge ; Phycites, s imilar to sea-weed or rushes. He also 
figure of bones. 
eee (160 A. D.) mentions instances of the remains 
of sea animals on the mountains, far from the sea, but uses 
desi as a proof of the general deluge recorded in Scie 
During the next thirteen or fourteen centuries, fossil r 
of animals and plants seemed to have attracted so little per 
tion, that few references are made to them by the writers of 
this peri uring these ages of darkness, all departments of 
knowledge suffered alike, and feeble repetitions of ideas de- 
rived from the ancients seem to have been about the only 
contributions of that period to Natural Science. 
Albert the Great (1205-1280 A. D.), the pte learned = 
of his ae mentions that a branch of a tree was foun 
, obj 
op Tas ab nies , of Naples, ais that he saw, in 
the mountains of Calabria, a considerable distance from the 
tittle a variegated hard marble, in which many Teme A 
With the Sapien of the sixteenth century, a grea 
Teens angen of ost ome 
where this stu began. The discovery © 
3 which abo ee aise he or at 
The ideas 0: f Aristotle ™ in 
