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In studvinir Swedenborg’s contributions in the held of geology \ve
must admire the many-sidedness and the sharp powers of observation to
which tliey bear witness. Although I have endeavored to confine myself
to his purely geological and paleontological contributions, ncvertheless
liydrographical problems, together with questions of a Chemical and
phv-sical nature, have also been touched upon, when they have had to do
with geological questions. For geology comes into contact with so manv
different Sciences that this could not possibly he avoided.
In giving an account of Swedenborg’s contributions in various
geological departments, it will be most suitable, in order to obtain a general
view, to treat the various questions by themselves, rather than to follow
the chronological order of his writings. For he returns to the same subject
in so many different places that the chronological sequence in many
cases is not suitable for the production of a.complete picture of his
treat-ment of one and the same question. A beginning may liere bo hest
made with that question in this department with which he First busied
himself, and to which he often returns with predilection.
Proofs for a higher water-level in former times.
To begin with it should be remembered that a long dispute had
been going on for several hundred years before Swedenboro’s time
concern-ing the interpretation of the fossils occurring in the rocks, about
which the most fantastic opinions had been expressed. Leonardo
da Yinci had alreadv understood their true nature, and the same
view was subsequently maintained by Fracastoro (1517), Palissy (1580),
Steno (1609), Leibniz (1680), and others. And when it could no
longer be denied that the fossils were the remnants of organic forms, there
were those who maintained that they were deposited in the places where
they are now found during the »universal flood»1 (Noah’s flood,
»syndafloden»).
Swedenborg certainly did not doubt that this inundation extended
over the whole earth, and it would seem as if in his first work on the
subject in question^)2, Om Watnens llögd och Förra Werldens starcka
Ebb och Flod. Bewjs utur Swergie. Stockholm, 1719, (On the Height
°f Water and the Strong Tides in the Primeval World. Proofs from Swedeii),!i
’ »Flood» here means the same as inundation.
* The numbers in small black type refer to the pages in Vol. I. of Kummel
Stre-denborg: Opera quaedam, etc., Stockholm, 1907.
3 An English translation of this treatise, as well as of all the other shorter
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