In Europe geological phenomena do not appear to have attracted serious attention till the sixteenth century, when the significance of fossils became the subject of an animated controversy in Italy. At that epoch this country held the front rank in learning and the arts, and an inquiry of that nature arose almost as a matter of course, because the marls, sands, and soft limestones of its lower districts teem in many places with shells and other marine organisms in a singular state of perfection and preservation. It is interesting to remark, that among the foremost in appealing to inductive processes for the explanation of these enigmas was that extraordinary and almost universal genius, Leonardo da Vinci. He ridiculed the current idea that these shells were formed "by the influence of the stars," calling attention to the mud by which they were filled, and the gravel beds among which they were intercalated, as proof that they had once lain upon the bed of the sea at no great distance from the coast. His induction rested on the evidence of sections which had been exposed during his construction of certain navigable canals in the north of Italy. Shortly afterward, the conclusions of Leonardo were amplified, and strengthened on similar grounds by Frascatoro. He, however, not only demonstrated the absurdity of explaining these organic structures by the "plastic force of Nature"--a favourite refuge for the intellectually destitute of that and even a later age, but he also showed that they could not even be relics of the Noachian deluge. "That inundation, he observed, was too transient; it had consisted principally of fluviatile waters; and if it had transported shells to great distances, must have strewed them over the surface, not buried them at vast depths in the interior of mountains." As Lyell truly remarks, "His clear exposition of the evidence would have terminated the discussion for ever, if the passions of man had not been enlisted in the dispute; and even though doubts should for a time have remained in some minds, they would speedily have been removed by the fresh information obtained almost immediately afterwards, respecting the structure of fossil remains, and of their living analogues." But the difficulties raised by theologians, and the general preference for deductive over inductive reasoning, greatly impeded progress. It was not till the methods of the schoolmen yielded place to those of the natural philosophers that the tide of battle began to turn, and science to possess the domains from which she had been unjustly excluded. For about a century the weary war went on; the philosophers of Italy leading the van, those of England, it must be admitted, for long lagging behind them, before the spectre of "plastic force" was finally dismissed to the limbo of exploded hypotheses in England. For instance, it was seriously maintained by the well-known writer on county history, Dr. Plot, in the last quarter of the