HKB
the other days of creation; but, upon the whole, it may be remarked, that few of the old cosmological theories had been conceived with so little violation of known analogies.
Generelli's illustrations of Moro, 1749.--The style of Moro was extremely prolix, and, like Hutton, who, at a later period, advanced many of the same views, he stood in need of an illustrator. The Scotch geologist was hardly more fortunate in the advocacy of Playfair, than was Moro in numbering amongst his admirers Cirillo Generelli, who, nine years afterwards, delivered at a sitting of Academicians at Cremona a spirited exposition of his theory. This learned Carmelitan friar does not pretend to have been an original observer, but he had studied sufficiently to enable him to confirm the opinions of Moro by arguments from other writers; and his selection of the doctrines then best established is so judicious, that a brief abstract of them cannot fail to be acceptable, as illustrating the state of geology in Europe, and in Italy in particular, before the middle of the last century.
The bowels of the earth, says he, have carefully preserved the memorials of past events, and this truth the marine productions so frequent in the hills attest. From the reflections of Lazzaro Moro, we may assure ourselves that these are the effects of earthquakes in past times, which have changed vast spaces of sea into terra firma, and inhabited lands into seas. In this, more than in any other department of physics, are observations and experiments indispensable, and we must diligently consider facts. The land is known, wherever we make excavations, to be composed of different strata or soils placed one above the other, some of sand, some of rock, some of chalk, others of marl, coal, pummice, gypsum, lime, and the rest. These ingredients are sometimes pure, and sometimes confusedly intermixed. Within are often imprisoned different marine fishes, like dried mummies, and more frequently shells, crustacea, corals, plants, &c., not only in Italy, but in France, Germany, England, Africa, Asia, and America;--sometimes in the lowest, sometimes in the loftiest beds of the earth, some upon the mountains, some in deep mines, others near the sea, and others hundreds of miles distant from it. Woodward conjectured that these marine bodies might be found everywhere; but there are rocks in which none of them occur, as is sufficiently attested by Vallisneri and Marsilli. The remains of fossil animals consist chiefly of their more solid parts, and the most rocky strata must have been soft when such exuviae were inclosed in them. Vegetable productions are found in different states of maturity, indicating that they were imbedded in different seasons. Elephants, elks, and other terrestrial quadrupeds, have been found in England and elsewhere, in superficial strata, never covered by the sea. Alternations are rare, yet not without example, of marine strata, with those which contain marshy and terrestrial productions. Marine animals are arranged in the subterraneous beds with admirable order, in distinct groups, oysters here, dentalia or corals there, &c., as now, according to Marsilli,[77] on the shores of the Adriatic. We must abandon the doctrine, once so popular, which denies that organized fossils were derived from living beings, and we cannot account for their present position by the ancient theory of Strabo, nor by that of Leibnitz, nor by the universal deluge, as explained by Woodward and others; "nor is it reasonable to call the Deity capriciously upon the stage, and to make him work miracles for the sake of confirming our preconceived hypothesis." --"I hold in utter abomination, most learned Academicians! those systems which are built with their foundations in the air, and cannot be propped up without a miracle; and I undertake, with the assistance of Moro, to explain to you how these marine animals were transported into the mountains by natural causes."[78]