wanting some who, during the
progress of this century, expressed more sound and sober opinions. The
title of a work of Cardano's, published in 1552, "De Subtilitate"
(corresponding to what would now be called Transcendental Philosophy),
would lead us to expect, in the chapter on minerals, many far-fetched
theories characteristic of that age; but when treating of petrified
shells, he decided that they clearly indicated the former sojourn of the
sea upon the mountains.[45]

_Cesalpino--Majoli_, 1597.--Cesalpino, a celebrated botanist, conceived
that fossil shells had been left on the land by the retiring sea, and
had concreted into stone during the consolidation of the soil;[46] and
in the following year (1597), Simeone Majoli[47] went still farther;
and, coinciding for the most part with the views of Cesalpino, suggested
that the shells and submarine matter of the Veronese, and other
districts, might have been cast up upon the land by volcanic explosions,
like those which gave rise, in 1538, to Monte Nuovo, near Puzzuoli. This
hint seems to have been the first imperfect attempt to connect the
position of fossil shells with the agency of volcanoes, a system
afterwards more fully developed by Hooke, Lazzaro Moro, Hutton, and
other writers.

Two years afterwards, Imperati advocated the animal origin of fossilized
shells, yet admitted that stones could vegetate by force of "an internal
principle;" and, as evidence of this, he referred to the teeth of fish
and spines of echini found petrified.[48]

_Palissy_, 1580.--Palissy, a French writer on "The Origin of Springs
from Rain-water," and of other scientific works, undertook, in 1580, to
combat the notions of many of his contemporaries in Italy, that
petrified shells had all been deposited by the universal deluge. "He was
the first," said Fontenelle, when, in the French Academy, he pronounced
his eulogy, nearly a century and a half later, "who dared assert," in
Paris, that fossil remains of testacea and fish had once belonged to
marine animals.

_Fabio Colonna._--To enumerate the multitude of Italian writers, who
advanced various hypotheses, all equally fantastical, in the early part
of the seventeenth century, would be unprofitably tedious; but Fabio
Colonna deserves to be distinguished; for, although he gave way to the
dogma, that all fossil remains were to be referred to the deluge of
Noah, he resisted the absurd theory of Stelluti, who taught that fossil
wood and ammo