258 NICOLAUS STENO 



1. In our own time bodies of men of exceedingly tall stature 

 have been seen. 



2. It is certain that men of unnatural size existed at one 

 time.^ 



3. The bones of other animals are often thought to be 

 human bones. 



4. To ascribe to Nature the production of truly fibrous bones 

 is the same as saying that Nature can produce a man's hand 

 without the rest of the man. 



There are those to whom the great length of time seems 

 to destroy the force of the remaining arguments, since the 

 recollection of no age affirms that floods rose to the place where 

 many marine objects are found to-day, if you exclude the 

 universal deluge, four thousand years, more or less, before our 

 time. Nor does it seem in accord with reason that a part of an 

 animal's body could withstand the ravages of so many years, 

 p. 63. since we see that the same bodies are often destroyed com- 

 pletely in the space of a few years. But this doubt is easily 

 answered, since the result depends wholly upon the diversity of 

 soil ; for I have seen strata of a certain kind of clay which by 

 the thinness of their fluid decomposed all the bodies enclosed 

 within them. I have noticed many other sandy strata which 

 preserved whole all that was entrusted to them. And by this 

 test it might be possible to come to a knowledge of that fluid 

 which disintegrates solid bodies. But that which is certain, 

 that the formation of many mollusks which we find to-day must 

 be referred to times coincident with the universal deluge, is 

 sufficiently shown by the following argument. 



It is certain that before the foundations of the city of Rome 

 were laid, the city of Volterra was already powerful. But in 

 the exceedingly large stones which are found in certain places 

 (the remains of the oldest walls) at Volterra, shells of every kind 

 are found,^ and not so very long ago there was hewn from the 



1 The belief in the existence of giants, based upon the finding of fossil bones of beasts, was 

 widespread. See E. B. Tyler, Researches into the Early History of Mankind (London, 

 1865), pp. 314-317; Primitive Culture, 4th edition (London, 1903), Vol. I, p. 387. 



^ The courses of massive masonry within- the impressive Porta all' Arco are of a yellow 

 conchiliferous sandstone, called panchina. See Dennis, Cities and Cemeteries of Eiruria 

 (London, 1878), Vol. II, p. 144. 



