FOSSILS, (Encycl.) The adventitious or extraneous fossils, or those which include the subterraneous exuviae of different sea and land animals, and even vegetables, as shells, teeth, leaves, stalks, &c. which are found buried in great abundance in divers parts of the earth, have employed the curiosity of several of our latest naturalists, who have each their several system to account for the surprising appearances of petrified sea-fishes, in places far more remote from the sea, and on the tops of mountains; shells in the middle of quarries of stone; and of elephants teeth, and bones of divers animals, peculiar to the southern climates, and plants only growing in the east, found fossil in our northern and western parts. See Plate CCCXVII.
Some will have these shells, &c. to be real stones, and stone plants, formed after the usual manner of other figured stones; of which opinion is our learned Dr Lister.
Another opinion is, that these fossil shells, with all other foreign bodies found within the earth, as bones, trees, plants, &c. were buried therein at the time of the universal deluge; and that, having been
penetrated either by the bituminous matter abounding chiefly in watery places, or by the salts of the earth, they have been preserved entire, and sometimes petrified.
Others think, that those shells, found at the tops of the highest mountains, could never have been carried thither by the waters, even of the deluge; inasmuch as most of these aquatic animals, on account of the weight of their shells, always remain at the bottom of the water, and never move but close along the ground.
They imagine, that a year's continuance of the waters of the deluge, intermixed with the salt waters of the sea, upon the surface of the earth, might well give occasion to the production of shells of diverse kinds in different climates; and that the universal saltiness of the water was the real cause of their resemblance to the sea-shells, as the lakes formed daily by the retention of rain or spring water produce different kinds.
Others think, that the waters of the sea, and the rivers, with those which fell from heaven, turned the whole surface of the earth upside down; after the same manner as the waters of the Loire, and other rivers, which roll in a sandy bottom, overturn all their sands, and even the earth itself, in their swellings and inundations; and that in this general subversion, the shells came to be interred here, fishes there, trees there, &c.
But nobody has set this system in a better light than Dr Woodward, in his Natural History of the Earth. That author, pursuing and improving the hypothesis of Dr Burnet, maintains the whole mass of earth, with every thing belonging thereto, to have been so broken and dissolved at the time of the deluge, that a new earth was then formed in the bosom of the water, consisting of different strata, or beds of terrestrial matter, ranged over each other usually according to the order of their specific gravities. By this means, plants, animals, and especially fishes and shells, not yet dissolved among the rest, remained mixed and blended among the mineral and fossil matters; which preserved them, or at least assumed and retained their figures and impressions either indentedly, or in relief.