4 
DAVIS ; PRO. PHILLIPS. 
Before the advent of the present century, a correct knowledge 
of the composition of the crust of the earth had no existence. The 
whole aggregation of the rocks was generally imputed to the action 
of the deluge as defined by the Mosaic description, and the 
occasional discovery of the embedded fossil remains of some plant 
or animal was considered due to a freak of nature, an accidental 
representation of some living form. Such were the theories of 
Tertullian and Pliny in the early part of the christian era, who, 
accepting the results of the labours of Aristotle and his school, 
considered that all fossil remains were due to a plastic virtue latent 
in the earth, or that the slime of rivers or the mud of the earth had 
power to originate the animals whose forms became entombed in the 
rocks. It is true, that even before the time of Aristotle, there 
were at rare intervals philosophers, as for instance, Zenophanes 
(500 B.C.), and Herodotus (450 B.C.), who attributed the presence 
of fossil fish and shells in the quarries far away from the sea, to 
the fact that the rocks containing them must at some previous time 
have formed the bed of the sea, and that the fish and molluses died 
and were entombed in the soft mud. Such theories were, however, 
generally ridiculed. After the time of Pliny (b. 23 A.D.), who learnt 
much fi'om the researches of the early Greeks, intervened some four- 
teen or fifteen centuries of almost universal darkness, during which 
time all knowledge suflTered from the general dearth of intellect in 
Europe ; science, art and literature being alike retrogressive and no 
development appearing to have been possible. During the 1 5th, 1 6th 
and 17th centuries, greater interest was taken in the collection of 
fossils, and several interesting books were written, largely illustrated 
with plates of specimens. This newly awakened interest was 
liveliest in Italy, but in this country Dr. Martin Lister contributed 
several articles to the Philosophical Transactions printed in the 
volumes for 1674 and succeeding years. He described certain 
stones figured like plants which he considered to be plants petrified. 
He also figured fossil and recent shells side by side, so that the 
close resemblance between the two at once became apparent, and 
