I wish to thank Professor R.W. Home of the University of Melbourne, who was my Ph.D. thesis superivisor,for criticisms and comments on an earlier draft. This reasearch was supported by a special Publication Development Grant from the University of Melbourne.

Dr M. Hunter of Birkbeck College, London, Dr D.M. Knight of Durham University and Dr D.R. Oldroyd of the University of New South Wales read a draft of this paper and gave me valuable suggestions.

Finally, I wish to thank Mrs Colleen Borrie of the University of Canterbury for her splendid typing of successive drafts.

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⁴⁴ Gunther, (7), Early Science, VII, 1930, p. 711.Google Scholar

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⁹⁴ Journal Book, 25 May 1709.

⁹⁵ Woodward wrote to Newton that ‘I send you, with this Letter, a Tract relating to the Method of Fossils; which, if not your own, is wholly owing to you; it being begun, carried on, and finished at your Request’. Woodward, John, Fossils of All Kinds digested into a Method, London, 1728Google Scholar, Letter to Sir Isaac Newton.

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¹⁰³ Porter, (10), The Making of Geology, p. 3Google Scholar. I believe that Porter's misinterpretations of seventeenth-century geological works which I criticize in this paper originate in his treatment of geological activities of the seventeenth century mainly as precursors of the nineteenth-century geology. Cf. Rudwick, (9), The Meaning of FossilsGoogle Scholar, Preface to the Second Edition.

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