1896.] Principles of Geology, and Us Aim. 181 



Steno (1669) observed a succession in the strata, and pro- 

 posed the theory that there were rocks older than the fossilif- 

 erous strata in which organic remains occur. He also distin- 

 guished between marine and fluvialite formations. He also 

 published his work " De solido intra solidum naturalites con- 

 tento," in which he proves the identity of the fossil teeth found 

 in Tuscany with those of living sharks. 



Scilla, in 1670, published a treatise on the fossils of Cala- 

 bria, and maintained the organic nature of fossil shells. But 

 both Steno and Scilla referred their occurrence to the Noach- 

 ean deluge. 



In England the diluvialists were busy forming idle theories 

 to give plausibility to their creed, that the Noachean deluge 

 was the cause of all the past changes on the earth's surface. 

 Differing somewhat in detail, they all agreed in the notion of 

 an interior abyss whence the waters rushed, breaking up and 

 bursting through the crust of the earth, to cover the surface, 

 and whither, after the deluge, they returned. Such absurd 

 notions greatly hindered the advance of science. 



Leibnitz (1680) proposed the bold theory that the earth was 

 originally in a molten state from heat, and that the primary 

 rocks were formed by the cooling of the surface, which also 

 produced the primeval ocean by condensing the surrounding 

 vapors. The sedimentary strata, he held, resulted from the 

 subsiding of the waters that had been put in motion from the 

 collapse of the crust on the cooling and contracting nucleus. 



Burnet (1680) published his " Sacred Theory of the Earth," 

 and it received great applause. It was written in ignorance 

 of the facts of the earth's structure, and was an ingenious specu- 

 lation. It abounds in sublime and poetical conceptions in 

 language of extraordinary eloquence. In 1692 he published 

 a work which treated of the Mosaic Fall as an allegory. 



Lister sent to the Royal Society, in 1683, a proposal for 

 maps of salts and minerals. He was the first to recognize the 

 arrangement of the earth's materials in strata, continuous over 

 large areas, and resembling each other in different countries. 



Hooke (1688) and Ray (1690), differing as much from Bur- 

 net as from Leibnitz, considered the essential condition of the 



