MACKIE — ON FOSSIL BIRDS. 



421 



and to separate the whole into two distinct classes ; ascribing to one 

 those which seem to be mere playthings of Nature, and to the other 

 those due to the universal deluge, by which, according to what we 

 learn from the sacred Scriptures (Gen. vii. 19), the whole earth was 

 drowned and the highest mountains covered with water. 



" § V. In the first class we will arrange all those fossil bodies which 

 represent various superficial images,— figures of ants, beetles, pea- 

 cocks, fishes and other animals, and which, it seems, had been already 

 frequently observed in the time of Pliny, who refers to them in his 

 H. N. lib. 37. Athanase Kirchner seems to have been the first to 

 observe them in marble, jasper, and agate-stone. Very interesting is 

 what Pliny says (1. c.) about an agate belonging to king Pyrrhus, on 

 which Nature has sculptured the figure of Apollo with his cithara, 

 attended by the nine Muses, and on which, by a certain tracery of 

 stains, the instruments of all the Muses were reproduced. See 

 ' Disputatio M. Jo. Jacobi Lungershausen,' held at Jena, about the 

 figured imitations of nature, showing many beautiful phenomena of 

 agates. 



" § VI. Those marbles, which are very elegantly coloured, re- 

 present to our fancy various figures, as may be seen in many very 

 curious specimens ; they are, therefore, largely dug in our neigh- 

 bouring principality of Id stein, where they adorn sacred as well as 

 profane buildings, from the pavement to the roof. Not less inter- 

 esting, and not yielding in interest to the above, whether we look at 

 the most elegant pictures they produce, or whether we consider them 

 as a plentiful supply of coloured marble, are the specimens which 

 were lately communicated to us by a friend from the principality of 

 Diz, and which we may recommend as particularly deserving the 

 notice of our readers, the first three, fig. 1, 2, and 3, drawn correctly 

 from the originals. The fig. 1 represents an entire human head, 

 together with all other parts of the body, not inelegantly drawn. 

 The fig. 2 represents a head of an Owl (see PI. XXII. Fig. 1, nobis) ; 

 and the fig 3 a view of a country, which is but a mere play (artifice) 

 of nature. With regard to the latter it may perhaps not be unsuit- 

 able to compare what D. D. Behrens in his ' Hercynia Curiosa,' 

 p. 134, titl. xiii. says, about the quarry called the 'map-stone.' It 

 is as follows : — ' This stone is found in the quarries of the villages 

 Petersdorff and Rudigers- or Eiddigers- Dorff belonging to the 

 Count Stollberg's estates at Hohestein or Neustadt, and the name 

 of ' map-stone ' was given to it because the veins of this stone bear 

 in the most part the appearance of rivers as traced on maps.' " 



The original runs thus : — 



" § TV. Quo vero eo melius hsec nostra figurata ab omnibus ac singulis 

 intelligi queant et ut omnis eo facilius inter ilia evitetur confusio ; operas 

 prsetium facturos nos putanms, si relictis aliis spinosis et futilibus circa 

 illorum production em oberrantibus opinionibus, cum hie quilibet suo videatur 

 abundare ingenio, ea dispescamus in duplicem classem, alia adscribendo 

 mero accidentali Natubje Lusui, alia e contra a Diluvio illo Univeksali, 



