THE

PREFACE.

A L A R G E field was before the Author of these volumes, whenhe fir ft laid down the plan of the Work. Part of it had beenmore, part less cultivated, and a part, not to reproach the Natu-ralists too much, left almost in it s native wildnefs. When I mention thepart mofl cultivated, I shall readily enough be understood to mean thatwhich relates to vegetables ; the animal world has, of late years, beganalso to be examined, but what has been written concerning it, is not by anymeans to be compared with the labours of the late and present age, in re-gard to Botany. "The Fossils, although of equal number, and of equalvalue with even the Animals, or with the Plants in use ; mo ft valuable ofall in point of property and intrinsic value ; had been scarce at all regardedas the objeEls of a regular disquisition.

FROM the earliesl time indeed men had written of them. Theo-phrafius, whose works on this fubjeEl I some time since published, althoughone of the earliesl of these whose works have travelled down tous, mentions the ftudy as not new, and even quotes Diodes, and someothers who went before him. But although the Greeks, and the Latins af-ter them, have treated of minerals, what they have written serves but toshew how little they were acquainted with them, nor has the induflry of theGermans served to much better ejfed, than the genius of those earlier in-vestigators. The one have described a few, the others have understood afew. The far greater part lay untouched, unnoticed, and even un-named : And, of the small number that either had cotijidered, none wereyet arranged into any kind of order.

IF we except our Dr Woodward, it will be hard to mention any au-thor, who has made but a tolerable attempt toward dijlributing the Fossilsinto method, and forming the study of them into a science. Linnceus hasfollowed him, but, instead of order, he has introduced confufeon : neitherdid the arrangement of Woodward, in his catalogues, by any means ap-proach towards a perfeEl system.- The real characters of these bodies hewas wholly ^acquainted with, and it was therefore impossible he shouldarrive at any sound method of disposing them.

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IN