17 



Soon after the book was published, lie received an official letter 

 from the Faculty of Theology in Paris, stating that fourteen 

 propositions in his works were reprehensible, and contrary to 

 the creed of the church. The first objectionable proposition 

 was as follows : " The waters of the sea have produced the 

 mountains and valleys of the land, — the waters of the heavens 

 reducing all to a level, will at last deliver the whole land over 

 to the sea, and the sea successively prevailing over the land, 

 will leave dry new continents like those we inhabit." 



Buffon was politely requested by the college to recant, and 

 having no particular desire to be a martyr to science, submitted 

 the following declaration, which he was required to publish in 

 his next work : " I declare that I had no intention to contra- 

 dict the text of Scripture ; that I believe most firmly all 

 therein related about the creation, both as to order of time and 

 matter of fact ; and I abandon everything in my book respect- 

 ing the formation of the earth, and, generally, all which may 

 be contrary to the narration of Moses." 



This single instance will suffice to indicate one great obsta- 

 cle to the advancement of science, even up to the middle of 

 the eighteenth century. 



Another important work appeared in France about this time, 

 Bourguet's "Traite des Petrifactions" published in 175S, which 

 is well illustrated with faithful plates. In England, a discourse 

 on earthquakes, by Dr. Robert Hooke, was published in 1705. 

 This author held some views in advance of his time, and main- 

 tained that figured stones were " really the several bodies they 

 represent or the moldings of them petrified, and not, as some 

 have imagined, a lusus natures, sporting herself in the needless 

 formation of useless things." He anticipates one important 

 conclusion from fossils, when he states that " though it must 

 be very difficult to read them and to raise a chronology out of 

 them, and to state the intervals of time wherein such or such 

 catastrophes and mutations have happened, yet it is not im- 

 possible." He also states that fossil turtles, and such large 

 Ammonites as are found in Portland, seem to have beeu the 

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