The sharp-eyed lynx, outfoxed by nature

Natural History, June, 1998 by Stephen Jay Gould

In the city of Rome, in 1603, several natural philosophers founded modern Europe's first scientific society. They called themselves the Lynxes, choosing this animal as their symbol because it was believed to be endowed with superlative sharpness of vision. In Part One of this essay, the author showed how the preeminent Lynx, astronomer Galileo Galilei, published flawed "observations" about Saturn. Part Two argues that Galileo's fellow Lynx Francesco Stelluti fell into a similar trap.

Part Two: Francesco Stelluti and the Mineral Wood of Aquasparta

Francesco Stelluti remained faithful to Galileo during the great physicist's last years of internal exile and arrest. On November 3, 1635, he wrote a long and interesting letter to Galileo at Arcetri, trying to cheer his friend with news from the world of science. Stelluti first expressed his sympathy for Galileo's plight: "God knows how grieved and pained I am by your ordeal" (Dio sa quanto mi son doluto e doglio de' suoi travagli). Stelluti then attempted to raise Galileo's spirits with the latest report on an old project of the Lynxesan analysis of some curious fossil wood found on the estate of their leader, Federico Cesi, the duke of Aquasparta:

You should know that while I was in

Rome, Signor Cioli visited the duchess

[Cesi's widow] several times and that she

gave him, at his departure, several

pieces of the fossil wood that is born near

Aquasparta. He wanted to know where it

was found and how it was generated....

for he noted that Prince Cesi, of blessed

memory, had planned to write about it.

The duchess then asked me to write something

about this, and I have done so and

sent it to Signor Cioli, together with a

package of several pieces of the wood,

some petrified and some just beginning to

be petrified.

This fossil wood had long vexed and fascinated the Lynxes. Stelluti had described the problem to Galileo in a letter of August 23, 1624, written just before the Lynxes' convention and the fateful series of events initiated by Stelluti's microscopical drawings of bees, intended to curry favor with the new pope (and described in Part I of my essay).

Our lord prince [Cesi] kisses your hands

and is eager to hear good news from

you. He is doing very well, despite the

enervating heat, which does not cause

him to lose any time in his studies and

most beautiful observations on this

mineralized wood. He has discovered several

very large pieces, up to eleven

palms [of the human hand, not the tree

of the same name] in diameter, and others

filled with lines of iron, or a material

similar to iron. . . . If

you can stop by here on your return to

Florence, you can see all this wood and

where it is born and some of the nearby

mouths of fire [steaming volcanic pits

near Aquasparta that played a major role in

Stelluti's interpretation of the wood].

You will observe all this with both surprise and

enthusiasm.

We don't usually think of Galileo as a geologist or paleontologist, but his catholic interests (with a small c!) encompassed everything that we would now call science, including all of natural history. Galileo did take his new telescope to his first meeting, in 1611, with Cesi and the Lynxes, and all members became enthralled with Galileo's reconstructed cosmos. But he also brought to the same meeting a curious stone recently discovered by some alchemists in Bologna and called the lapis bononiensis (Bologna stone) or the "solar sponge," for the rock seemed to absorb and then reflect the sun's light. The specimens have been lost, and we still don't know the composition or the nature (found in the earth or artificially made) of Galileo's stone (some scholars conjecture that it may have been barium sulfide). But we do know that the Lynxes were entranced. Cesi, committed to a long stay at his estate in Aquasparta, begged Galileo for some specimens, which arrived in the spring of 1613. Cesi then wrote to Galileo: "I thank you in every way, for truly this is most precious, and soon I will enjoy the spectacle that, until now, absence from Rome has not permitted me." (I read this quotation and information about the Bologna stone in Paula Findlen's excellent book Processing Nature University of California Press, 1994].)

Galileo then took a reciprocal interest in Cesis geological discovery--the fossil wood of Aquasparta--so Stelluti's letters reflect a clearly shared interest. Cesi did not live to publish his controversial theories on this fossil wood. Therefore, the ever loyal Stelluti gathered the material together, wrote his own supporting text, engraved thirteen lovely plates, and published his most influential work (with the possible exception of those earlier bees) in 1637 under a title almost as long as the text of the treatise: Trattato del legno fossile minerale nuovamente scoperto, nel quale brevemente si accenna la varia & mutabil natura di detto Legno, rappresentatovi con alcune figure, che mostrano il luogo dove nasce, la diversita dell'onde, che in esso si vedono, e le sue cosi varie, e maravigliose forme (Treatise on newly discovered fossil mineralized wood, in which we point out the diverse and mutable nature of this wood, as represented by several figures, which show the place where it is born, the diversity of waves [growth lines] that we see in it, and its highly varied and marvelous forms).