Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/236

222 in the earth. To this same cause, as we shall see, many later authors attributed the origin of all fossil remains.

Previous to this, Anaximander, the Miletian philosopher, who was born about 610 years before Christ, had expressed essentially the same view. According to both Plutarch and Censorinus, Anaximander taught that fishes, or animals very like fishes, sprang from heated water and earth, and from these animals came the human race; a statement which can hardly be considered as anticipating the modern idea of evolution, as some authors have imagined.

The Romans added but little to the knowledge possessed by the Greeks in regard to fossil remains. Pliny (23-79 ), however, seems to have examined such objects with interest, and in his renowned work on natural history gave names to several forms. He doubtless borrowed largely from Theophrastus, who wrote about three hundred years before. Among the objects named by Pliny were: "Bucardia, like to an ox's heart"; Brontia, resembling the head of a tortoise, supposed to fall in thunderstorms"; "Glossoptra, similar to a human tongue, which does not grow in the earth, but falls from heaven while the moon is eclipsed"; "the Horn of Ammon, possessing, with a golden color, the figure of a ram's horn"; Ceraunia and Ombria, supposed to be thunderbolts"; "Ostracites, resembling the oyster shell"; "Spongites, having the form of sponge"; Phycites, similar to sea-weed or rushes." He also mentions stones resembling the teeth of hippopotamus; and says that Theophrastus speaks of fossil ivory, both black and white, of bones born in the earth, and of stones bearing the figure of bones.

Tertullian (160 ) mentions instances of the remains of sea animals on the mountains, far from the sea, but uses them as a proof of the general deluge recorded in Scripture.

During the next thirteen or fourteen centuries, fossil remains of animals and plants seem to have attracted so little attention, that few references are made to them by the writers of this period. During these ages of darkness, all departments of knowledge suffered alike, and feeble repetitions of ideas derived from the ancients seem to have been about the only contributions of that period to natural science.

Albert the Great (1205-'80 ),the most learned man of his time, mentions that a branch of a tree was found, on which was a bird's nest containing birds, the whole being solid stone. He accounted for this strange phenomenon by the vis formativa of Aristotle, an occult force, which, according to the prevalent notions of the time, was capable of forming most of the extraordinary objects discovered in the earth.

Alexander ab Alexandro, of Naples, states that he saw, in the