9 



collection of fossils made by John Kentmann. This is the 

 oldest catalogue of fossils with which I am acquainted. 



George Agricola (1494-1555) was, according to Cuvier, the 

 first mineralogist who appeared after the revival of learning in 

 Europe. In his great work, "De He MetalUca," published in 

 1516, he mentions various fossil remains, and says they were 

 produced by a certain " materia pinguis" or fatty matter, set 

 in fermentation by heat. Some years later, Bauhin jimblished 

 a descriptive catalogue of the fossils he had collected in the 

 neighborhood of Boll, in Wurtemberg.* 



Andrew Mattioli, a distinguished botanist, adopted Agricola's 

 notion as to the origin of organized fossils, but admitted that 

 shells and bones might be turned into stone by being permeated 

 by a "lapidifying juice." Falloppio, the eminent professor 

 of anatomy at Padua, believed that fossil shells were generated 

 by fermentation where they were found ; and that the tusks of 

 elephants, dug up near Apulia, were merely earthy concretions. 

 Mercati, in 1571, published figures of the fossil shells preserved 

 in the Museum of the Vatican, but expressed the opinion that 

 they were only stones, that owed their peculiar shapes to the 

 heavenly bodies. Olivi, of Cremona, described the fossils in the 

 Museum at Verona, and considered them all " sports of nature." 



Palissy, a French author, in 1580, opposed these views, and 

 is said to have been the first to assert in Paris that fossil shells 

 and fishes had once belonged to marine animals. Fabio Colonna 

 appears to have first pointed out that some of the fossil shells 

 found in Italy were marine, and some terrestrial. 



Another peculiar theory discussed in the sixteenth century 

 deserves mention. This was the vegetation theory, especially 

 advocated by Tournefort and Camerarius, both eminent as 

 botanists. These writers believed that the seeds of minerals 

 and fossils were diffused throughout the sea and the earth, and 

 were developed into their peculiar forms by the regular incre- 

 ment of their particles, similar to the formation of crystals. 



* Sistoria novi et admirabilis Foniis Balneique Bollensis, in Ducaiu Wirkm- 

 bergico, Mbntbeliard, 1598. 



