TO 
RODERICK IMPEY MURCHISON, Esq., F.R.S., Erc., 
PRESIDENT OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
In the autumn of last year, I sat down to write a few geo- 
logical sketches for a newspaper; the accumulated facts of 
twenty years crowded upon me as I wrote, and the few 
sketches have expanded into a volume. Permit me, honored 
Sir, to dedicate this volume to you. Its imperfections are 
doubtless many, for it has been produced under many disadvan- 
tages ; but it is not the men best qualified to decide regarding it 
whose criticisms I fear most; and | am especially desirous to 
bring it under your notice, as of all geologists the most thor- 
oughly acquainted with those ancient formations which it pro- 
fesses partially to describe. [ am, besides, desirous it should 
be known, and this, I trust, from other motives than those of 
vanity, that, when prosecuting my humble researches in ob- 
scurity and solitude, the present President of the Geological 
Society did not deem it beneath him to evince an interest in 
the results to which they led, and to encourage and assist the 
inquirer with his advice. Accept, honored Sir, my sincere 
thanks for your kindness. 
Smith, the father of English Geology, loved to remarx that 
he had been born upon the Oolite—the formation whose 
various deposits he was the first to distinguish and describe, 
and from which, as from the meridian line of the geographer, 
the geological scale has been graduated on both s:des. I[ 
(vii) 
