INTRODUCTION. 3 
prevailed at no remote period, occurs in a “ History of the 
County of Surrey,” in which it is stated that in a search 
for coal near Guildford the borers broke, and “ this was 
thought by Mr. Peter Lely, the Astrologer, to have been 
the work of subterranean spirits, who wrenched off the 
augers of the miners, lest their secret haunts should be 
invaded.” 
But in the latter part of the seventeenth century, there 
were several eminent men in England who were greatly in 
advance of the age in which they lived, and strenuously 
exerted themselves to discover and promulgate the true prin- 
ciples of Geology. Among these, Dr. Martin Lister, phy- 
sician to Queen Anne, was one of the most distinguished. 
This accomplished naturalist, in his great work on shells, 
which remains to this day a splendid monument of his 
labours, and of the talents and filial affection of his two 
daughters, by whom all the plates were engraved, figures 
and describes many fossil shells as real animal productions, 
and carefully compares them with recent species. He also 
recognised the distinction of strata by the organic remains 
they contain ; and to him the honour is due of having first 
suggested the construction of geological maps ;* he was 
likewise well acquainted with the position and extent of the 
Chalk and other strata of the South of England.t 
From the foreign writers, who at an early period had ob- 
tained some correct notions of the structure of our planet, 
and of the nature of the revolutions it had undergone, I select 
the following beautiful and philosophical illustration of the 
physical mutations to which the surface of the earth is per- 
* See Notes on the Progress of Geology in England, by W. 
Fitton, M.D. &c. Philos. Mag. vols. i. and ii. for 1832 and 1833. 
t This celebrated physician and British geologist died in 1712, 
and was interred in the old church at Clapham; where a tablet to 
his memory is affixed to the outside of the north wall of St. Paul’s 
Chapel. ' 
