--oh word of fear!
Unpleasing to commercial ear.

A visit to the collection of Signor Vincenzo Bozza best assisted me in
changing, or at least turning the course of my ideas. Nothing in natural
history appears more worthy the consideration of the learned world, than
does this repository of petrefactions, so uncommon that scarcely any
thing except the testimony of one's own eyes could convince one that
flying fish, natives, and intending to remain inhabitants, of the
Pacific Ocean, are daily dug out of the bowels of Monte Bolca near
Verona, where they must doubtless have been driven by the deluge, as no
less than omnipotent power and general concussion could have sufficed to
seize and fix them for centuries in the hollow cavities of a rock at
least seventy-two miles from the nearest sea. Their learned proprietor,
however, who was obligingly desirous to shew me every attention,
answering a hundred troublesome questions with much civility, told us,
that few of his numerous visitants gave that plain account of the
phenomenon, shewing greater disposition to conjure up more difficult
causes, and attribute the whole to the world's eternity: a notion not
less contrary to found philosophy and common sense, than it is repugnant
to faith, and the doctrines of Revelation; which prophesied long ago,
that in the last days should come _scoffers, walking after their own
lusts_, and saying, _Where is now the promise of his coming? for since
the time that our fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were
from the beginning of the creation._

Well! these are unpleasant reflections: I would rather, before leaving
the plains of Lombardy, give my country-women one reason for detaining
them so long there: it cannot be an uninteresting reason to us, when we