NATURAL PHILOSOPHY.
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importance in natural philosophy, equal with mathematicsin allairs of scientific truth, we prefer the writer who affordsinformation regulated by this criterion. Such appears tobe Mr. Parkinson , 8 who, besides giving us in mostcases chymical resolution, as his design was to furnish par-ticulars relative to the interior state of the earth; theseconsiderations offer an additional reason for our preference.
Respecting the formation of several substances foundin the interior of the earth, we now propose to speak : as, ofthe nature and growth of stones, figured stones, diluvianstones, fossils, silica, rock crystals, alumine, clays, litho-marga, slate, chalk, tufa, marble, magnesia, forming stea-tites, asbestos, serpentine, sulphureis, pyrites, or mar-casites, &c. of bituminous substances, peat, — coal, —processand growth of fossils; many of which substances werementioned by the ancients, consequently have had an earlyexistence, as known to the world some thousands of yearssince; many of them having bean noticed by Xenophanes ,Herodotus, Eratosthenes, Strabo, Pliny, Ovid , and others.
The learned and very ingenious Air. Parkinson says, inthe third letter of his excellent work, on the “ Organic“ Remains of a former World," that in the earliest philo-sophical writings which have been transmitted to us, nu-merous proofs are to be found of the existence ofsubstances which had, even in those comparatively earlyages of the world, undergone the process of petrifaction.He says,
“ Xenophanes, the founder of the Eleatic sect, whowrote upwards of 500 years before Christ, maintained thatGod and the world were the same: he contended for theeternity of the universe. In support of which opinion, hedwelt much upon the circumstance of petrified shells beingfound in the internal parts of mountains, and in the bowelsof the earth. He related that in the quarries of Syracuse ,the impressions of fish existed; that the impression of asmall fish was found deeply imbedded in a rock at Paros ;and that almost every species of marine animal had beenthus preserved; inferring from the appearance of theseextraordinary phenomena, that these places must in distantages have been covered with the sea. 9
“ Herodotus , who wrote 440 years anterior to Christ,speaks 10 particularly of shells existing in the mountains of