23 
History of English Fossils. This valuable work contains a cata- 
logue of that valuable collection of fossils which the Doctor had 
formed, and which is now in the possession of the University of 
Cambridge. Some notice is also taken of these substances in 
Christopher Merret’s Pinax Rerum naturalium Britannicormn, the 
first part of which was published in 160^ ; at the same time Mons. 
Childrey published, at Paris, L’Histoire des Singulartes naturelles 
d Angleterre, d' Europe, et du Pays de Galles, in which several fossil 
substances are spoken of. 
Rieske, Major, Kirchmajer, and Sachs, deserve also to be men- 
tioned, for the aid they yielded to this science at this period. Several 
^ ei \ \ aluable contributions also appeared, in different periodical 
publications, illustrating several parts of the science. A dissertation 
of Wolfgang Wedel may be placed with the utmost propriety among 
those most worthy of attention. In this dissertation, De Conchis 
saxatilibus, which he introduced in 16^2, in the Ephemerides pub- 
lished under his direction, he differed widely from his contempora- 
ries ; and unreservedly asserted, that the stones, bearing the form of 
shells, were actual petrifactions, being natural shells converted into 
stone. 
Among the last supporters of the opinion of the generation of 
these bodies in the bowels of the earth, may be mentioned the cele- 
brated Langius, who strenuously contended for their having thus 
obtained their forms and existence: Dr. Plot, who believed their 
gures to result from the operation of certain plastic powers with 
which certain saline bodies were endowed : and, lastly, Lhwyd, who 
combated the vis plastica of Plott, and supported the ideas o'f their 
P o uction from the seminia of fishes, &c. raised with vapours from 
^ sea , and conveyed by the clouds and rain, through the crevices 
£ ^ c internal parts of the earth. The more rational conjecture 
no ward, who attributed their situation to the effects of the 
S era deluge, was rendered of less effect, in opposing these 
