322 PALAEONTOLOGY. 



would correspond with the recent vegetable and animal of the same 

 latitude ; but we find this not to be ivniversally the case in every vege- 

 table or animal, although it is so in some. It therefore leads to a sup- 

 position that not only had the sea shifted its position respecting the 

 surface of the globe, but that the position of the poles respecting the 

 sun had been altered, so as to have thrown different surfaces of the 

 globe opposite the sun, which might be the cause of the waters shifting ; 

 and this supposition arises from the fossil parts of animals of one climate 

 being found recent in that of another [i. e. animals found fossil in one 

 climate are recent in another], instances of which we have many; 

 and many recent animals of a peculiar climate are found in a fossil state 

 universally, while many are not yet matched in any. I shall only take 

 the elephant as an instance of the second : I suppose that this animal 

 can only live in a warm climate. The preserved bones of elephants 

 being almost universally found, is a proof of their having been either 

 at one time, or at different periods, a very universal animal 



"History gives us no determined account of this change of the waters ; 

 but as the Sacred History mentions the whole surface of the earth having 

 been deluged with water, the natural historians have laid hold of this, 

 and have conceived that it would account for the whole. Forty days' 

 water overflowing the dry land could not have brought such quantities 

 of sea-productions on its surface ; nor can we suppose thence, taking all 

 possible circumstances into consideration, that it remained long on the 

 whole surface of the earth ; therefore there was no time for their being 

 fossilized ; they could only have been left, and exposed on the surface. 

 But it would appear that the sea has more than once made its incur- 

 sions on the same place ; for the mixture of land- and sea-productions 

 now found on the land is a proof of at least two changes having taken 

 place." — P. x. 



In appreciating the inadequacy of the Noachian deluge to account 

 for the marine strata and fossils now forming dry land, Hunter had 

 been preceded by many kindred minds, endowed with the divine faculty 

 of discovering truth. 



In 1517, Fracastoro, an Italian philosopher, in reference to the 

 numerous marine animal remains brought to light in the excavations 

 made during the repairs of the city of Yerona, contended that those 

 fossil shells had all belonged to living animals, which had formerly 

 lived and multiplied where their exuviae were found. He exposed the 

 absurdity of having recourse to a certain ' materia pinguis' or plastic 

 force, which it was said had power to fashion stones into organic forms ; 

 and with no less cogent arguments, he demonstrated the futility of 

 attributing the situation of the shells in question to the Mosaic deluge. 



