s overlying subterranean cavities.

He declared that he had obtained proof that Tuscany must successively
have acquired six distinct configurations, having been twice covered by
water, twice laid dry with a level, and twice with an irregular and
uneven surface.[50] He displayed great anxiety to reconcile his new
views with Scripture, for which purpose he pointed to certain rocks as
having been formed before the existence of animals and plants: selecting
unfortunately as examples certain formations of limestone and sandstone
in his own country, now known to contain, though sparingly, the remains
of animals and plants,--strata which do not even rank as the oldest part
of our secondary series. Steno suggested that Moses, when speaking of
the loftiest mountains as having been covered by the deluge, meant
merely the loftiest of the hills then existing, which may not have been
very high. The diluvian waters, he supposed, may have issued from the
interior of the earth into which they had retired, when in the beginning
the land was separated from the sea. These, and other hypotheses on the
same subject, are not calculated to enhance the value of the treatise,
and could scarcely fail to detract from the authority of those opinions
which were sound and legitimate deductions from fact and observation.
They have served, nevertheless, as the germs of many popular theories of
later times, and in an expanded form have been put forth as original
inventions by some of our contemporaries.

_Scilla_, 1670.--Scilla, a Sicilian painter, published, in 1670, a
treatise, in Latin, on the fossils of Calabria, illustrated by good
engravings. This work proves the continued ascendancy of dogmas often
refuted; for we find the wit and eloquence of the author chiefly
directed against the obstinate incredulity of naturalists as to the
organic nature of fossil shells.[51] Like many eminent naturalists of
his day, Scilla gave way to the popular persuasion, that all fossil
shells were the effects and proofs of the Mosaic deluge. It may be
doubted whether he was perfectly sincere, and some of his contemporaries
who took the same course were certainly not so. But so eager were they
to root out what they justly considered an absurd prejudice respecting
the nature of organized fossils, that they seem to have been ready to
make any concessions, in order to establish this preliminary point. Such
a compromising policy was short-sighted, since it was to little p