But the clear and philosophical views of Fracastoro were disregarded, and the talent and argumentative powers of the learned were doomed for three centuries to be wasted in the discussion of these two simple and preliminary questions: first, whether fossil remains had ever belonged to living creatures; and, secondly, whether, if this be admitted, all the phenomena could not be explained by the deluge of Noah. It had been the general belief of the Christian world down to the period now under consideration, that the origin of this planet was not more remote than a few thousand years; and that since the creation the deluge was the only great catastrophe by which considerable change had been wrought on the earth's surface. On the other hand, the opinion was scarcely less general, that the final dissolution of our system was an event to be looked for at no distant period. The era, it is true, of the expected millennium had passed away; and for five hundred years after the fatal hour when the annihilation of the planet had been looked for, the monks remained in undisturbed enjoyment of rich grants of land bequeathed to them by pious donors, who, in the preamble of deeds beginning "appropinquante mundi termino"----"appropinquante magno judicii die," left lasting monuments of the popular delusion.[42] But although in the sixteenth century it had become necessary to interpret certain prophecies respecting the millennium more liberally, and to assign a more distant date to the future conflagration of the world, we find, in the speculations of the early geologists, perpetual allusion to such an approaching catastrophe; while in all that regarded the antiquity of the earth, no modification whatever of the opinions of the dark ages had been effected. Considerable alarm was at first excited when the attempt was made to invalidate, by physical proofs, an article of faith so generally received; but there was sufficient spirit of toleration and candor amongst the Italian ecclesiastics, to allow the subject to be canvassed with much freedom. They even entered warmly into the controversy themselves, often favoring different sides of the question; and however much we may deplore the loss of time and labor devoted to the defence of untenable positions, it must be conceded that they displayed far less polemic bitterness than certain writers who followed them "beyond the Alps," two centuries and a half later. CONTROVERSY AS TO THE REAL NATURE OF FOSSIL ORGANIC REMAINS.