seventeenth century, though its absurdity had been demonstrated by his Italian contemporaries; as by Scilla, in his treatise on the fossils of Calabria, and by Steno, in that on "Gems, crystals, and organic petrifactions enclosed in solid rocks." The latter had proved by dissecting a shark recently captured in the Mediterranean, that its teeth and bones corresponded exactly with similar objects from a fossil in Tuscany, and that the shells discovered in sundry Italian strata were identical with living species, except for the loss of their animal gluten and some slight mineral change. Moreover, he had distinguished, by means of their organic remains, between deposits of a marine and of a fluviatile character. But now, as the "plastic force" dogma lost its hold on the minds of men, its place was taken by that which regarded all fossils as the relics of an universal deluge. "The theologians who now entered the field in Italy, Germany, France, and England, were innumerable; and henceforward, they who refused to subscribe to the position that all marine organic remains were proofs of the Mosaic deluge, were exposed to the imputation of disbelieving the whole of the sacred writings. Scarce any step had been made in approximating to sound theories since the time of Frascatoro, more than a hundred years having been lost in writing down the dogma that organised fossils were mere sports of Nature. An additional period of a century and a half was now destined to be consumed in exploding the hypothesis that organised fossils had all been buried in the solid strata by Noah's flood."[58]