The excavations made for repairing the city of Ve- rona in 1517 brought to light a number of fossil re- mains, the appearance of which exercised the wits of that time ; and, among others, Fracastoro boldly ex- pounded their true meaning and relations. He de- clared that they had not originated in any such " plas- tic force" as was pretended, nor could they have been the results of the waters of the deluge. After having been thus rescued from the mineral kingdom, thcj' •wei'e, however, universally attributed to the deluge. Fabio Colonna, in 1000, and the whole of the Italian ■writers of this period, considered that all petrifactions ■were the remains of the Noacliian deluge.
In 1009, Steno, a Dane, attached to the court of Tuscany, expounded the true theorj' of organic fos- sils ; he labored to harmonize his views with Scripture by selecting strata which appeared to him to be unfos- siliferous, and treating them as liaving been created before the existence of animals and jdants. In 1076, Quirini contended that the diluvial waters could not have effected all the operations attributed to them, and maintained that the universalitj' of the jMosaic deluge ■was not to be insisted on. In 1688, Robert Hook, in his posthumous treatise on earthquakes, assigns to or- ganic remains their true character, and supposes that some species may have been lost. In his diluvial the- ory he attempts to crowd into the time between the creation and the deluge, and into the latter, all the visible phenomena of upheaval or dislocation.
In 1690, Dr. Thomas Burnet, in his Sacred Theory of the Earth, descril)es the earth at the beginning as a fluid mass composed of all kinds of materials. The heaviest descended to the bottom and formed a solid kernel, around which the waters, and aftei-wards the atmosphere, united ; but between the water and at- mosphere there was formed an oily stratum, which re- ceived, little li}' little, all the earthy constituents with ■which the air was still charged. t)n this consolidated bed, marshy, thin, uniform, level, witliout mountains, ■without valleys, ■without either seas or rivers, lived
tlie antediluvian generations. At this epoch the marshy crust, dried up by the heat of the sun, split, and fell down in the great abyss of waters. From thence came the universal deluge, the disarrangement of the axis of the globe, and the changing of climates. The earth, thus drowned, had still some cavities into which the waters entered, little by little, and so re- turned to their subterranean reservoir. Thus the ocean is a part of the great abyss, the isles are the fragments,, the continents are the great residuary masses of the old world. To the confusion brought about by the breaking up of the waters are owing the mountains and other undulations that we now see. This is a specimen of a large class of writings which passed for the elfusions of learning and piety in the Augustan age of English literature.
In 16C6, Whiston, the great astronomer, published his new theory of the earth. He conceived of the earth as still having in its midst a solid and burning kernel, retaining the heat which it received from the sun when it was only the nucleus of the comet, and continually spreading it towards its circumference. This nucleus is it;-elf surrounded by a great abyss, which is composed of two rings, of which the lower is a heavy fluid, and the upper water ; it is this layer of water which constitutes the foundation of our earth. The deluge was occasioned by another comet striking the earth, and was the parent of all the disturbances now manifest in its crust.
About 1080 the great Leibnitz wrote of the earth as an extinct sun vitrilied. According to him, its great- er portion was the subject of a violent fire, at the time when Moses tells us that the light was separated from the darkness. The fufion of the globe produced a vit- rified crust; when the crust was cold, the humid parts, which had risen in vapor, fell again, and formed the ocer.n. The sea then deposited calcareous rocks. It at first enveloped all the surface of the globe, and sur- mounted the higher parts which at present form the continents and isles. Tlius the shells and other rub- bish of marine animals that one finds every whe;e prove that the sea has covered all the land ; and the great quantity of fixed salts, of sand, and other mat- ters, fused and calcined in the earth, testify to the uni- versal fire, and that it preceded the existence of the sea.
In 1095, Dr. W^oodward, in his Discourse cti the Not' ural History of the Earth, most abl}' vindicates the proper nature of organic remains, and disposes of the views of those who attribute them to casual inunda- tions, or to the wash of the sea when the land was first made; but he is equally unsuccessful in the formation of a hjpofhesis with his predecessors. He holds that at the deluge the solid strata of the earth were dis- solved in the water ; the remains of animals sank down and became imbedded according to their relative gravity.
In Italy, Yallisneri, finding b}' his own careful ob- servations that the facts were not in accordance with the theories then in vogue, which were affirmed to be founded in the interpretation of Scripture, attacked the interpreters, and demonstrated that the}' were in error. He wisely contented himself with recording his own observations, and would not attempt the con- struction of a theory.