ORYCTOLOGY is the science which teaches the natural history of those ani mal and vegetable substances which are dug out of the earth, in a mineralized state. In the following slight sketch of the history of these substances it will be seen, that the remarkable situations in which they have been found, and the ex traordinary changes which they have un dergone, have led to the adoption of va rious contradictory and absurd notions re specting their nature and origin ; which have been corrected, as just ideas have been obtained respecting the formation of the earth itself. Xenophanes, more than 400 years before Christ, was led to the belief of the eternity of the universe, by discovering the remains of different marine animals imbedded in rocks, and under the surface of the earth. Hero dotus ascertained the existence of fossil shells in the mountains of Egypt, and was thereby induced to conclude, that the sea most have once covered those parts. In the pyramids of Egypt, men tioned by this author, and which had been built at so early a period that no satisfac tory accounts could be derived from tra dition respecting their erection, the stones were found to contain the remains of marine animals, and particularly of such as exist no longer in a recent state, and differ essentially from all known animals. These were supposed by Strabo, who saw the fragments of these stones laying around the pyramids, to be the petrified remains of the lentils which had been used for food by the workmen. Eratos thenes, Xanthus of Lydia, and Strabo, have all noticed and variously commented upon the existence of animal remains thus wonderfully preserved. In the works of Pliny many fossil bodies are mentioned ; particularly the bucardia, resembling an ox's heart, but which was doubtlessly a cast formed in a bivalve shell ; glossope tra, bearing the form of a tongue, and sup posed to fall from the moon, when in its wane ; resembling the spawn of fish ; horns of ammon, resembling, in form, the ram's-horn ; lepidotes, like the scales of fishes ; meconites, bearing a re semblance to the seeds of poppies ; bron tia, to the head of a tortoise ; spongites, to sponge ; phycites, to sea-weeds or rushes, &c. Although many were con vinced, by the exact resemblance which several of these substances bore to differ ent species of marine animals, that these must be the remains of such animals, and must have been deposited on these spots, at a period when they were covered by the sea ; others, unable to comprehend a circumstance so inexplicable as the exist ence of the sea over some of the highest mountains, chose rather to have recourse to an apparently more easy mode of ex planation, by attributing their formation to the energies of certain occult powers, such as the via p/astica, vie formative, and xis lapidiEicutiva.
The formation of these bodies was also attributed, by our countryman, Dr. Plot, to certain plastic powers inherent in some saline bodies ; and Dr. Woodward, one of our latest writers on these substances, although aware that the situations, in which these bodies were found, could only be explained by the powerful and extensive effects of the deluge, found himself obliged also to have recourse to so occult plastic power, to explain the formation of some of these substances. "There are," he observes, "various phe nomena that plainly chew that, when they were brought forth at the deluge, the earth was destroyed, all the solids of it, metals, minerals, stone, and the rest, dis solved, taken op into the water, and there sustained along with the sea-shells, and other extraneous bodies ; till at length all settled down again, and formed the strata of the present earth. The shells, and other extraneous bodies, being thus lodg ed among this stony and other mineral matters, that afterwards became solid : when this comes now to be broke up, it exhibits impressions of the shells, and other bodies lodged in it ; showing even the hardest of it to have been once in a state of solution, soft, and susceptible of impression." (Preface to Catalogue of English Fossils, p. 3.) But unable other wise to oppose the opinion of Dr. Butt ner, that the fossil corals were actually corals which had existed before the flood, he had recourse to the supposition of their haying derived their forms from a second arrangement of their component parts, whilst in the waters of the deluge. have seen," he says, " fossil coralloids that have been composed of various sorts of mineral and metallic matter, that yet have been formed into shape of the ma rine mycetitm, astroitm, and other like corals. Now all these have been formed out of the dissolved mineral and metallic matter in the water of the deluge. The antediluvian corals were like all other solid stony bodies then in solution in that water, and might concrete again and form true corals there as well as in the sea wa ter. Doubtless it did so ; but that matter was in so small a quantity, and bore so little a proportion to the mineral and me tallic, with which it was then mixed and confused, as now rarely, if ever, to be met with." (Letters on Fossils, by Dr. Wood ward, p. 82.) At present, no one hesi tates at considering all organized fossil bodies as having existed during a former state of this globe, and having been then endued with the energies of vegetable or animal life.