120 Mr. Williams, and his Annotator Dr. Millar.. 
tone of superiority which his Aunotator, as above mentioned, 
seems to.assume, over Mr. W. in his various remarks, scattered 
through the work; calculated, too evidently, for lessening the 
Reader’s estimation for Mr. W’s knowledge and performance, 
and exalting that of the Annotator’s own Appendix: which should 
have formed a separate publication, and stood on its own ground, 
not on the shoulders of Mr. Williams, as at present. 
I do not wish to be understood herein, as entirely undervaluing 
Dr. M’s performance, which certainly presents a very copious 
and useful collection of extracts, of great part of what has been 
detailed or written by Geological observers, in the Transactions 
of Learned Societies, and in other works of recent date, with. 
many of the Doctor’s own observations, the whole under such an 
arrangement, as. would have done him eredit in a separate publi- 
tion, and been, perhaps, in every way commendable: but in their 
present situation, the great display made, of the technical know- 
ledge of Minerals in general (the greater part of which, from their 
scareity, are quite unimportant ina practical point of view, such 
as Mr. Williams professed to take) and the almost entire absence 
of proper illustrations, of the obscurities and defects of Mr.: 
Williams’s text,on the score of technical Mineralogical knowledge, 
which are so often alluded to, have certainly appeared to me, as 
improper, and have done so to many admirers of Mr. Williams’s 
work, with whom Lam acquainted. . 
It was not until very lately, although frequently inquiring since 
the year 1801, that I could procure a copy of Mr. Williams’s first 
Edition, from which, and other circumstances I judge, that they: 
must be very scarce. On perusing this copy, my opinion of the 
impropriety of Dr. M. as the annotator of Mr. Williams’s Work, 
has been considerably strengthened, by observing, that the whole 
of Mr. Williams’s Preface, containing 62 pages of curious and 
important matter, has been suppressed by Dr. M.! 
What renders this omission the more questionable in its cha 
racter, is, that although Dr. Miilar, like many others of the mo- 
dern partizans in Geology (who are alluded to with just repre- 
hension by one of your Correspondents, in the Note in p. 47 of 
your Jast number) in pp. 560 and 565 of his Appendix, gives the 
outlinesof Dr. Hutton’sand Mr. /Verner’s Theories,and intimates, 
that these, divide the opinions of modern Geologists: yet he says 
not a word, that Mr. Williams, on whom he had obtruded him- 
self as an Annotator, had examined Dr. Hutton’s Theory, when 
recently published, and after his own work was ready for the 
Printer, and had in the latter 40 pages of his Preface (which 
Dr. M. had suppressed) considered and pointedly refuted, most 
of the leading tenets of this System! 
If it should be stated in excuse of Dr. M’s conduct herein to- 
wards 
