386 SKETCH OF PALEOBOTANY. 



reached by the ancients were far more correct than those drawn twelve 

 to sixteen centuries later, from much more ample data. Strabo, Xeno- 

 phanes, Xanthus, Eratosthenes, and even Herodotus believed that the 

 fossil shells they had seen once contained living animals, and that in 

 process of time they had been turned into stone. They further con- 

 cluded that the mountains in which they were found imbedded were 

 once under the sea. These doctrines were known to the Romans, and 

 of their popular acceptance by the cultivated classes we have evidence 

 in the familiar lines of Ovid's " Metamorphosis." ^^ This view was also 

 shared by Pliny and other post- Augustan writers, and even Tertullian^" 

 did not perceive its inconsistency with Christian philosophy, which caused 

 its complete rejection during the next thirteen centuries. Of the fact 

 of this long stagnation not only in this but in nearly all other depart- 

 ments of science there is no question,^" but as to its cause there are dif- 

 ferences of opinion which this is not the place to discuss. The doubt- 

 less charitable attempt, however, to throw the responsibility back upon 

 Aristotle and his famous doctrine of generatio wquivoca,^^ merely because 

 that doctrine was found more in harmony with the cosmogony which 

 became ingrafted upon those sombre ages, should, in the single interest 

 of historic truth, be condemned, while it is too late in the scientific 

 epoch to make it either necessary or prudent to hesitate in confessing 

 that the reasoning powers of man were virtually destroyed during that 

 period by the almost universal and thoroughly honest acceptance of a 

 false cosmogony.^^ 



■"^"Vidi ego, quod fuerat quoudam solidissima tellus 

 Esse fretum, vidi factas ex aequore terras, 

 Et prooul a pelago conchte jacuere marinse, 

 Et vetus inventa est in montibns aucora summis.'' 



(Lib. XV, 262.) 



■•^ " Mutavit et totus orbia aliquando, aqnis omnibus obsitus ; adhuc maris couch* et 

 buccinse perigrinantur iu montibus, cupientes Platoni probare etiam ardua fluitasse." 

 (De Pallio, II.) 



60 "During the next thirteen or fourteen centuries fossil remains of animals and 

 plants seem to have attracted so little attention that few references are made to them 

 by writers of this period. During these ages of darkness all departments of knowl- 

 edge suffered alike, and feeble repetitions of ideas derived from the ancients seem to 

 have been about the only contributions of that period to natural science." (Address 

 of Prof. O. C. Marsh as president of the American Association for the Advancement 

 of Science, 1879. -'Proceedings," Vol. XXVIII, p. 4.) 



""In den darauf folgenden Zeiten verdriiugte die aristoteliache und nachherige 

 soholastiche Philosophie die Naturkunde, wobei man natiirlich auch die Petrefakten 

 fast ganzlich vernachlassigte und sie fast nur erwahnte, um die ungegrtindete Lehre 

 des Aristoteles von der generatio cequivoca alsbald auch auf sie anzuwenden.'' (Gijp- 

 pert, Systema Filicum Fossilium, p. 4.) 



'•'' " Cette science eut beaucoup plus de peine a se d^velopper que les autres sciences 

 naturelles, telles que la physique et la chimie, car elle rencontra tout d'abord uue op- 

 position religieuse qui en entrava longtemps les progr&s. L'orthodoxie biblique craig- 

 nant que la science ne s'^cartat trop des traditions de laGenfese, interdisait aux savants 

 r^tude ind^pendante des fossiles, dans lesqueles elle ne voyait que les debris des fitres 

 anciens d^truits par le deluge de Noe." (Schimper, Traits de pal6ontologie v^g^tale 

 Tomel, p. 6.) ' 



