trashy books, filled with myriads of impossible "facts," undoubtedly did a great deal to block the progress of true evolutionary studies. Just as the public today does not distinguish between the would-be orator who talks of the "facts" of natural selection, and the true evolutionist, and ridicules both, so the public the eighteenth century linked the speculators with the sincere, hard-working naturalists, and declared the ideas of both to be foolish and blasphemous.
One of the most amusing of the speculators was Claude Duret, mayor of a small French town. In his "Histoire Admirable des Plantes," published in 1609, he described and illustrated a tree which he said was rare in France, but "frequently observed in Scotland[1]." From this tree, as pictured by the mayor, leaves are falling; on one side they reach water, and are slowly transformed into fishes; upon the other
- ↑ Osborn, on whose writings most of this chapter is based, comments that Scotland was "a country which the Mayor evidently considered so remote that his observation would probably not be gainsaid." This important fact, that the faker could not be contradicted, probably was responsible for many of the absurdities published. However, when we examine the general state of knowledge at that time, we are forced to admit that this is not the whole explanation. Without much question, many of these writers were at least partly serious, and actually believed the impossible tales which they printed, just as they believed they had seen witches and ghosts.
