The removal of the library and catalogues to the Bodleian destroys the incentive to study and add to the collection because of the absence of readily accessible reference works .sx Divorced from the specimens the catalogues become neglected , and ultimately the specimens are thrown away because the catalogues are not to hand .sx So are lost all Dr. Plot's figured specimens and the great collection of Edward Lhwyd , his assistant .sx It is very interesting to see the composition of a seventeenth-century palaeontologist's reference library .sx Plot , in addition to Biblical quotations and Philosophical Transaction references , alludes to no less than fifty-two works .sx Amongst these the elder Pliny's writings are prominent .sx His classification of fossils is essentially that of Gesner erected 111 years before .sx When I say that the four main groups in this classification are stones relating to heavenly bodies ; those relating to the inferior heavens ; those relating to the atmosphere ; and those relating to the Watery Kingdoms , you will gather that it does not rest on any sound scientific footing .sx Dr. Plot himself has no tremendous regard for this method ; but he says it is better than classifying the things alphabetically .sx I beg leave to doubt this .sx Then there comes out of Yorkshire the learned Dr. Martin Lister with an opinion on fossils , which , emanating as it does from the foremost conchologist of the day , can hardly be ignored .sx Lister has figured recent and fossil shells , side by side , not , as might be imagined , to show their essential similarity but as an illustration of the plagiarism of Nature .sx Lister's theory might well be christened ( acknowledging our indebtedness to Siegfried Sassoon ) the pseudomorphic hieroglyphic hypothesis , since whilst denying the former vitality of fossils he suggests that different types of self-generated shell-like stones might characterize different rocks .sx It might therefore be said that his lapse in regarding fossils as sports of nature is here offset by his penetration as to their possible use .sx It would certainly be possible to use a tool of which the true nature was unknown , if , empirically , it had been found to serve a useful purpose .sx But to credit Lister with the first formulation of the basic principle of stratigraphy , as has been claimed , would be to bestow credit falsely .sx I think Lister had in mind merely the characterizing of different types of rocks by distinctive fossils .sx Today this would be called recognizing the facies of the rocks and Lister's " ingenious " , as it was entitled , to make a map showing the surface distribution of strata was a proposal for a mineral , not a true geological map .sx Such a map would , for instance , colour all limestone outcrops under the same shade .sx Although of value in mining and quarrying operations it is academically barren .sx It can make no contribution to working out earth-history .sx The primary division of strata in the hierarchy of their classification is according to age not lithology .sx To elevate the latter is to produce a barren classification .sx Edward Lhwyd , assistant and later successor to Dr. Plot as curator of the Ashmolean Museum , had a more intimate acquaintance with fossils than any man in England and possibly in the world .sx This study , together with his scholarly researches into the Welsh and other Gaelic languages , formed his life's work .sx Whenever he could afford it , he travelled widely to collect fossils and examine Welsh , Irish , Cornish and Breton manuscripts .sx He wrote the first illustrated textbook on fossils .sx His familiarity with them showed him that their resemblance to living things was no mere coincidence , but the inference that fossiliferous beds were elevated sea-floors was too much for him .sx He adopted the " stray seed " hypothesis , but in a spirit of candour he wrote to John Ray , " I am not so fond of this Hypothesis , as not to be sensible myself , that it lies open to a great many " .sx Still it was the best compromise he could come to .sx A poor museum curator with a salary of +40 6per annum plus what he could get from selling fossils at a time when there was no great demand for them , was in no position to tilt at the thirty-nine articles .sx In rejecting the Flood hypothesis , he says , in effect , that he demurs first because it is not in accord with the Sacred Scriptures and , secondly , because it does not accord with the facts .sx We may note the order of the objections .sx The doubts entertained by Leonardo da Vinci about the Flood theory were explained away by John Woodward .sx In 1695 , he published a much-admired Essay on the natural history of the earth .sx This was intended to repair imagined omissions in the Mosaic narrative in general and the account of Noah's Flood in particular .sx In the Essay , Woodward promises to " give myself up to be guided wholly by Matter of Fact ; intending to steer that Course which is thus agreed of all hands to be the best and surest :sx and not to offer anything but what hath due warrant from Observations ; and those both carefully made and faithfully " .sx Never can a promise made so fervently have been so lamentably forgotten in the course of a few pages .sx Woodward imagined that the Flood had transformed the globe into a porridge-like mass and that the strata and the organic remains had subsided to stratify in layers according to their specific gravity .sx Fantastic as the theory is , it becomes more so when we learn that it was acceptable to Diluvialists in England and abroad for many years .sx With regard to the Deluge , let me say that it is its world-wide occurrence which makes physical difficulties .sx An extensive , though local , inundation can easily be explained , but where did the water issue from and to where did it retreat to if there was enough to cover the whole surface ?sx I like Woodward's approach to this problem .sx " For my part , " he says , " my Subject does not necessarily oblige me to look after this Water ; or to point forth the place whereunto 'tis now retreated .sx For when , from the Sea-shells and other Remains of the Deluge , I shall have given you undeniable Evidence that it did actually cover all parts of the Earth ; it must needs follow that there was then Water enough to do it , where it may be now hid , or whether it be still in being or not .sx " One is tempted to say , " When you come to an insurmountable obstacle look it squarely in the face and pass " , were it not that the argument is sound , granted the premises .sx As might have been expected , the hint of the marvellous and the untrammelled speculation emanating from " fossil stones " could not fail to attract the attention of that delightful character , John Aubrey .sx We turn to his Natural History of Wiltshire confidently expecting some delicious things .sx Now there is a great deal of truth in the notion that the geological environment is the primary factor in determining the character of a country ; not only topographically but historically .sx If the course of history is channelled by economics , then surely natural resources lie at the foundation of a country's development .sx And as men are the products of their times , the national character contains at least an element imposed upon it by the inanimate environment .sx Aubrey recognizes this on a very fine scale indeed .sx I quote :sx " according to the several sorts of earth in England ( and so all the world over ) the Indigenae are respectively witty or dull , good or bad .sx In North Wiltshire .sx . a dirty clayey country the Indigenae speake drawling ; they are phlegmatique , skins pale and livid , slow and dull , heavy of spirit .sx . melancholy , contemplative and malicious ; by consequence whereof come more law suites out of North Wilts , at least double to the southern parts " which , bye the bye , are composed of Chalk .sx As to Aubrey's notions on fossils we simply record that he was much plagued with notions about earthquakes and their possible consequences on the earth's rotation ; and if he recognized that fossils give " clear evidence that the earth hath been all covered over by water " and when he " often-times wishes for a mappe of England coloured according to the colours of the earths with marks of the fossiles and " , we conclude that he read his Philosophical Transactions and was acquainted with Hooke and Lister .sx As an example of the type of ingenuity provoked by a chance stimulus , we have the Theory of the Earth due to Whiston .sx In the latter years of the seventeenth century comets were " in the " , as it were .sx The comet which led Newton to predict their parabolic orbits was visible between December 1680 and March 1681 .sx Halley's even more famous comet with a much less eccentric elliptical orbit , having a period of 75 to 76 years , was visible in 1682 .sx Whiston conjectures that Newton's comet was the same as that recorded in 44 B.C. , A.D. 531 and A.D. 1106 which suggested a period of 575 years or so .sx He notes that , of two postulated dates for Noah's flood , namely , 2349 B.C. and 2926 B.C. , the discrepancy of 577 years is near enough to the assumed period of Newton's comet ; so that what ever [SIC] date for the Flood be accepted , the interval between it and 1681 was an integral multiple ( 7 or 8 ) of the postulated period of revolution of Newton's comet .sx Note , however , that this period was not calculated from the observed visible portion of the comet's orbit , but inferred from certain coincidental dates .sx Nevertheless , having convinced himself that a comet stood above the earth at the time of the Deluge he invoked one to explain the other .sx The earth passed through the watery vapours of the comet's tail , and the " floodgates of heaven " were opened whilst its gravitational attraction fractured the earth's crust whence emerged the " waters of the " .sx The rest of Whiston's theory is according to Woodward with wholesale extinction of life and its stratification according to specific gravity in a porridgey mass which ultimately hardened into the stratified crust .sx The whole theory is ludicrous ; but if the rules of the game are first to invoke only recorded catastrophes and , secondly , to pay due regard to contemporary scientific fashions , then , surely , Whiston's attempt is a gem of its kind .sx Molyneux's suggestion that the extinction of the Irish Elk was due to plague is perhaps a similar piece of opportunism .sx It is the type of explanation involved in explaining wet summers by atom-bomb explosions .sx Amidst this welter of conflicting opinion the truth was there waiting to be disseminated .sx Robert Hooke in England and Nicholas Steno in Italy had published opinions which , had they been combined , would have opened up the subject 150 years before it was destined to flower .sx But these were writing in advance of their times and were consequently ignored .sx Thus Hooke in 1688 in a Discourse on Earthquakes not only knew fossils for what they were but said that " it would not be impossible to raise a chronology out of " .sx The occurrence of fossil Turtles in the London Clay of the Isle of Sheppey led him to conclude that England had formerly enjoyed a warmer climate than today .sx This was the first suggestion for an investigation into palaeoclimatology , a subject which is not completely established today , although inferences made from fossil faunas lie at the heart of its present development .sx Nineteen years before Hooke's Discourse , the implications of stratification had been announced to an indifferent scientific world by Steno .sx As founder of the science of crystallography , Steno would hardly confuse crystals with true fossils .sx It is a pity that their chronological possibilities were not added to his insight into stratification .sx But both Hooke and Steno threw out their geological ideas incidentally to their main pursuits ; and their contemporaries to whom Geology was their main interest were unable to appreciate their foresight .sx For instance , their record of fossils at either a particular height above sea-level or depth below the surface in mines and quarries shows their ignorance of the subject of stratification .sx Except in the rare horizontally bedded rocks these data have no significance chronologically .sx