20 
Toward the close of this century, Bauhin formed a copious col- 
lection, and published the necessary descriptions of the petrified 
shells, which were found near the baths of Boll. This descriptive 
catalo^ie is to be found in his Historia novi et adniirahilis Fontis 
Falneique Follensis, in Fucatu TFirtemhergico. Montbeillard, 1598. 
About the same time Michael Mercatus wrote his Metallotheca 
Faticana, which was not, however, published until the year , 
when it was given to the public by Lancisius, physician to the pope. 
The opinions of Mercatus not differing from those which prevailed 
in the age in which he wrote, are not indeed very interesting ; but 
the notes of Lancisius, and the figures, which are executed in a very 
masterly manner, and which convey very accurate ideas of the 
bodies they represent, render the work of value. 
In the seventeenth century, collections of fossils became much 
more general. Only two catalogues of collections had hitherto ap- 
peared, but now several very extensive ones were published. In 
1622, appeared a copious description of the celebrated museum of 
Calceolarius, of Verona; and twenty years after that was published 
the catalogue of Besler’s collection. In 1652 appeared Wormius’s 
catalogue; in 1663 was published Spener’s, and in 1666 Septala’s. 
An account of the museum of the King of Denmark was published 
in 1669 ; in 16/4 Cottorp’s catalogue appeared ; and in 16^8 was 
published that of the celebrated Kircher. In 168^ Dr. Grew wrote 
an accoimt of the curiosities, which were contained in the museum 
of Gresham-College ; and in the year 1695, appeared the catalogue 
of Petiver, an apothecary in London, who, at a vast expense, had 
formed a most valuable collection. 
The earliest writer on these subjects, in this century, was Caspar 
Schwenkfeld, who, in 1600, published a catalogue of the fossils dis- 
covered in Silesia. But the most intelligent writer, of this period, 
was Fabius Columna, who published, in 1616, his treatise De Glos- 
sopetris, a work of considerable merit, intended to correct the erro- 
