LAMARCK'S WORK IN GEOLOGY gi 



^ " But," says Lyell,* " the clear and philosophical 

 views of Frascatero were disregarded, and the talent 

 and argumentative powers of the learned were doomed 

 for three centuries to be wasted in the discussion of 

 these two simple and preliminary questions: First, 

 whether fossil remains had ever belonged to living 

 creatures ; and, secondly, whether, if this be admitted, 

 all the phenomena could not be explained by the 

 deluge of Noah." 



Previous to this the great artist, architect, engineer, 

 and musician, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-15 19), who, 

 among other great works, planned and executed some 

 navigable canals in Northern Italy, and who was an 

 observer of rare penetration and judgment, saw how 

 fossil shells were formed, saying that the mud of 

 rivers had covered and penetrated into the interior of 

 fossil shells at a time when these were still at the 

 bottom of the sea near the coast. f 



That versatile and observing genius, Bernard 

 Palissy, as early as 1580, in a book entitled Tke Ori- 

 gin of Springs from Rain-water, and in other writings, 

 criticized the notions of the time, especially of Italian 

 writers, that petrified shells had all been left by the 

 universal deluge. 



" It has happened," said Fontenelle, in his eulogy 

 on Palissy, delivered before the French Academy a 

 century and a half later, " that a potter who knew 

 neither Latin nor Greek dared, toward the end of the 

 sixteenth century, to say in Paris, and in the pres- 

 ence of all the doctors, that fossil shells were veritable 

 shells deposited at some time by the sea in the places 



* Principles of Geology. 



f Lyell's Principles of Geology, 8th edit., p. 22. 



