MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE, ARTS AND OFFICERS FOR 1923 LETTERS President R. A. SMITH, Lansing VOLUME III Vice-Presidents ANTHROPOLOGY, H. H. Bartlett, Ann Arbor CONTAINING PAPERS SUBMITTED AT THE ANNUAL BOTANY, O. A. Farwell, Detroit MEETING IN 1923 ECONOMICS, C. E. Griffin, Ann Arbor he annual volume of Papers of the Michigan LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE, J. W. Scholl, Ann Arbor T Academy of Science, Arts and Letters is issued GEOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY, A. B. Peck, Ann Arbor under the joint direction of the Council of the Academy PSYCHOLOGY, T. S. Henry, Kalamazoo and of the Executive Board of the Graduate School of SANITARY AND MEDICAL SCIENCE, R. L. Kahn, Lansing the University of Michigan. The editor for the Academy ZOOLOGY, T. L. Hankinson, Ypsilanti is Paul S. Welch; for the University, Eugene S. Secretary McCartney. CARL D. LA RUE, Ann Arbor Previous publications of The Michigan Academy of Librarian Science now known as The Michigan Academy of W. W. BISHOP, Ann Arbor Science, Arts and Letters, were issued under the title, Annual Report of the Michigan Academy of Science. Editor Twenty-two volumes were published, of which the first P. S. WELCH, Ann Arbor five are out of print. Copies of volumes numbered six to twenty-two are still available for distribution and will be sent on exchange so long as the editions last. CONTENTS Applications for copies should be addressed to the ANTHROPOLOGY Librarian of the University of Michigan. FOSSIL LORE IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE. Eugene S. Annual Reports embracing the proceedings of the McCartney..........................................................................1 Academy will however, continue to be published. GEOLOGY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO THE PRESENCE OF CATARACT STRATA IN MICHIGAN ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO SUPPORTED BY FOSSIL EVIDENCE. G. M. Ehlers .................8 MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED A DRILL CORE SECTION OF THE SALINA BELOW THE SALT LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE BED OF THE DETROIT ROCK SALT COMPANY MINE. John W. Vanderwilt ..........................................................................9 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO FOSSIL LORE IN GREEK AND LATIN PAPERS OF THE MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF LITERATURE SCIENCE ARTS AND LETTERS EUGENE S. McCARTNEY EDITORS The word fossil, which is of Latin extraction, is a derivative of the verb fodio, fodere, ‘to dig.' The Latin PAUL S. WELCH form fossile is a translation of the Greek orukton, which UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN means ‘dug.' The Greek original seems to have no EUGENE S. MCCARTNEY technical atmosphere about it, so that in rendering Greek UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN authors who speak of fossil fish translators sometimes use the expression ‘underground fish.' In a lake near Ruscino in Gallia Narbonensis people caught mullets (?) THE MACMILLAN COMPANY by digging down two or three feet and then plunging in a LONDON: MACMILLAN & COMPANY, Limited trident. The fish caught in this way were called 'dug 1924 mullets.’1 The adjective is the same as the one in use All rights reserved for fossil fish. The Roman could speak of 'fossil salt’ in 2 Copyright, 1924, the same way that he spoke of fossil animals. BY EUGENE S. MCCARTNEY, EDITOR Set up and printed, The Greeks and Romans naturally had many February, 1924 opportunities to examine fossils. Several of their PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. temples are built of a shelly limestone and of course the beauty of many of their marbles, of which they were very Selections from Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts and Letters -- Vol. 3 – Page 1 of 9 fond, was greatly enhanced by fossils replaced by mastodons in a cave. From the position of the fossil crystals.3 In the classical countries fossils at times remains, the natives had conjectured that they belonged obtrude themselves upon one's notice. Just outside of to burrowing animals.12 Rome on Monte Mario I found many fine specimens of In northern latitudes of eastern Asia, teeth and bones of bivalves as large as the palm of one's hand. At Corneto mammoths have been found embedded in cliffs and one can still see in the fields shells as large as the crown banks of rivers. Local geologists (or mythographers) of the head. formulated their own theory to account for them. They Along the Anio River in the deposits of travertine left by concluded that the earth was the natural habitat of the overflow of the stream there are countless certain creatures, and they tell of having seen the impressions of twigs and leaves. The water is so surface of the earth disturbed when the creatures - saturated with calcareous matter that one can almost moved beneath it. If by any misadventure the animals make impressions to order. The quarries below Tivoli, broke through and saw the light of day, at that very which were used to provide building stone for ancient moment they died.13 Some Siberians believed that the Rome, are still being worked. Here it takes but a few horns and teeth of elephants belonged to colossal rats days for an incrustation of lime to form about a twig which unawares broke through the surface and died on placed in slowly trickling water. coming in contact with the air.14 So strange an occurrence as the finding of mineralized A fossil that makes appeal to the popular imagination remains of animals would naturally stimulate any almost everywhere that it is found is the ammonite. imaginative people to speculate about their origin. The Pliny15 makes mention of cornua Ammonis, ‘horns of discovery of impressions of fish in the earth led the Ammon,' that were found in Ethiopia,16 and adds that Greeks to formulate some peculiar theories about them. they resemble horns of rams. They had the magic virtue Aristotle says that many kinds of fish live in the ground, of bringing to one dreams of things that were to but without moving, and that they are found by digging.4 happen.17 In India “he who possesses a black We learn from Aristotle's literary executor, Salagrama keeps it wrapped in white linen, washes and Theophrastus, that fossil fish occurred in Paphlagonia. adores it daily. A draught of the water in which the shell Since there was no water in the neighborhood and since has been washed is supposed to purge away all sin and the fish could not have had access to one another, he to secure the temporal and eternal welfare of the concludes that they were generated spontaneously.5 drinker."18 According to him, these fish have their own habitat and Ammonites bear a closer resemblance to coiled snakes their own peculiar nature, just as do the species found in 6 than to rams' horns and hence are frequently called sea and river. The idea that fish were born ‘snake-stones.’19 The likeness is so real that attempts spontaneously required no stretch of the imagination for have been made to supply the missing heads and even a Greek. There were many kinds of fish, small animals to account for their loss. At Whitby they served as the and insects whose origin was accounted for in this way. 20 7 coat of arms of the town. Local tradition told how at Pliny comments in regard to these fish that unless they the prayer of St. Hilda, the abbess of the convent, the have the same nature as creatures that live in the earth snakes that inhabited the precincts not only suffered they make much less wonderful the subterranean capital punishment, but were petrified.21 A novel use for existence of the mole. ammonites was made by the Glastonbury lake-village, of We are told that fossil fish were found in a plain between pre-Roman age, which has yielded several that were the Pyrenees and the Narbo.8 In Heraclea and in pierced as spindle-whorls.22 Pontus there were 'dug' fish which were unearthed along The ‘deer-horn’ stone, which so closely resembled horn rivers especially and in moist places. Their presence in that one could not readily tell whether it was horn or the earth was resourcefully explained. As some regions stone,23 may have been a petrifaction. were drying up, the fish gradually followed the moisture down into the mud; when the earth had become dry, The geographer Strabo24 saw at the foot of the pyramids they remained in the moisture of the mud, in a lair, as it heaps of stones some of which resembled lentils in size were. But whenever they were excavated before the and shape. They contained substances like grain half return of the water, then they would move.9 peeled. The local explanation was that they were remnants of workmen's food converted into stone.25 On one occasion when the Romans were expecting a Strabo refutes this by saying that in his country, Amasia, war with Macedon, there were several prodigies, among a long hill in a plain abounded in pebbles of a porous them the emergence of fish from the ground as the 10 stone resembling lentils. furrows were being turned. There were ancient stories about people going fishing with mattocks, but our Fossilized echini have long had popular ideas informant is careful to add that not every one believed associated with them. In the Romano-British village of that fish were dug instead of being caught.11 Rotherly, Wiltshire, many of them have been found.26 It would seem that their presence in graves is to be Peoples other than the Greeks have concluded that ascribed to some supposed amuletic property. The animals might live under the ground. During his travels Essex laborer believes that while a fossil sea-urchin is in South America Darwin was shown some bones of kept in his home he and his family will never lack Selections from Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts and Letters -- Vol.