Xviii PREFACE, 



presented as having taken place previous to the existing order of 

 things, and it is assumed that the present races of animals and 

 vegetables, the companions of Man, did not exist on the globe 

 during any of the antecedent epochs. But the most sincere 

 friend of Revelation need be under no alarm, even should he be 

 anxious to establish the authority of his Bible over a wider field 

 than the Moral History of our race. If the Sacred Historian 

 be considered as referring to the earlier seras in the commence- 

 ment of his narrative only, " In the beginning, God created the 

 Heaven and the Earth, 1 ' and to have contemplated, in what 

 follows, the creation of the animals and vegetables of the Mo- 

 dern Epoch, it will be found that the deductions of science and 

 the records of inspiration harmonize, — as the Word and the 

 Works of God must do, if rightly interpreted. The question, 

 indeed, lies within very narrow bounds. Are the Zoological and 

 Geological Epochs established as true in science ? If those who 

 are qualified to judge shall pronounce in the affirmative, then 

 must every interpretation of that brief portion of the sacred 

 page, inconsistent therewith, be rejected as spurious, and the 

 advocates of error consigned to occupy a page in the History 

 of Prejudice, along with the persecutors of Galileo. 



There is one bed occurring in England, and fruitful in 

 the remains of animals, denominated Crag, the relations of 

 which seem as yet imperfectly understood. By some it is 

 supposed to be identical with the upper marine formation 

 of the Penult Epoch ; by others as a newer deposite, but 

 still older than any of the members of the Modern Epoch. 

 Even in the 99th Number of the Mineral Conchology, Mr 

 Sowerby, under the article Pecten rcconditus, seems to view it 

 as of the same zoological era with the London Clay. Judging 

 from specimens of recent species of shells from the Crag, and 

 the evidence of portions of the bones of the mammoth, an ex- 

 tinct quadruped of the Modern Epoch, having been found asso- 

 ciated with the shells, the author is inclined to view it as a Ma- 

 rine Diluvium belonging to the present era. 



In the enumeration of British Animals contained in this vo- 

 lume, the author has referred to the extinct or fossil species so 



