Jesuit Athanasius Kircher

This view is strikingly similar to those notions, which are nowadays widely used. Likewise, we find at first Kircher and other great idea, developed in this century, Elie de Beaumont, namely, that the mountains are the known geometrically correct lines. Finally, this same researcher carried out the first observations, have shown that the earth is the closer to the center, such as in deep mines, it becomes warmer. If you attach here the description of the great earthquake of Calabria in 1638 and a description of the South Italian volcanoes (the last, unfortunately, is equipped with unnatural pictures of Etna and Vesuvius), it becomes quite clear why the author of the essay «Mundus subter-raneus» should take pride of place in the geological literature of the XVII century. Of the British researchers should be mentioned here Hooke (Nooke, 1668) and the famous zoologist Ray (Ray, 1692), both of these scholars are far ahead of its time and made remarkably loyal to the idea, unfortunately, mixed up with the wrong ideas. They thought it possible the remains of animals, found in successive layers, to reconstruct the history of organisms from the time of Adam to the flood. The shape of some fossil Hook came to the conclusion that in ancient times in England was dominated by the warmer climate. Thus, and this division of our science gradually evolved. At the boundary between the ancient and the new period of science is Buffon. In the middle of last century it was a brilliant advocate of the best ideas of the time: relying on observation Gettara (Guettard), old geologist with the modern trend, he developed views in many respects similar to ours, and quite detached from the age-old traditions. This contribution can not overshadow even the fact that he subsequently changed his views.