PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
In the first edition of the WonDERS OF GEOLOGY, an inten- 
tion was expressed of immediately publishing, as a sequel to 
those volumes, “First Lessons,” or an Introduction to the 
Study of Petrifactions, for persons wholly unacquainted with 
the nature of Fossil Remains; but the completion of the 
contemplated work was unavoidably postponed, from year to 
year, by the long and severe indisposition of the Author. 
In the meanwhile several works professing the same 
object have issued from the press; and an enlarged edition 
of Sir C. Lyell’s “ Exements” has also appeared, in which 
the elementary principles of physical Geology are fully illus- 
trated, and numerous figures given of the characteristic 
fossils of the several formations, or groups of strata. But 
that department of the science which especially treats of 
Organic Remains is necessarily considered in a cursory 
manner; and a work upon the plan originally contemplated 
by the Author seems still to be required, to initiate the 
young and uninstructed in the study of those MxpaLs oF 
Creation—those electrotypes of nature—the mineralized 
remains of the plants and animals which successively 
flourished in the earlier ages of our planet, in periods 
incalculably remote, and long antecedent to all human 
history and tradition. 
