388 Miscellanies. 
For the sake of forwarding the great object in view, Dr. Mantell 
yielded to the wishes of his friends and the public, by giving occa- 
sional lectures on topics relating to the sciences which he has so 
successfully cultivated. 'Those who had read his various works, in 
which science, genius, and taste were warmed by a noble but disci- 
plined and sustained enthusiasm, waited only to learn whether his 
powers as a public speaker (at that time, as we have been credibly in- 
formed, little inured to actual practice) were commensurate with his 
high attainments as an original investigator, and as a man of science 
and of intellectual vigor ; nor were they disappointed. We are assured 
by numerous public statements in the Brighton papers, as well as from 
independent sources, that his success in this character was fully com- 
mensurate with his previous reputation. In consequence, he was 
called upon to give a regular course of lectures on geology and the 
connected sciences, aided by his magnificent museum and by ample 
illustrations from drawings. . 
We have already mentioned this course of lectures, and we copied 
an abstract of one lecture, as givenin a Brighton paper. (See Vol. 33, 
p- 328 of this Journal.) It was numbered 1, and we intended, as then 
announced, to make other extracts from time to time; although ex- 
traordinary absences and engagements have suspended the selection, 
we still cherished the design, when the arrival of the work announced 
at the head of this notice, superseded our purpose, in a = which we 
could not well explain, without this introductory statemen 
‘The Wonvers or Grotocy of Dr. Mantell contain a substance 
of the lectures given by him at Brighton, and thus the public are put 
in possession, in a concise and perfected form, of the whole of the 
stores of knowledge from which we intended to cull the most instrue- 
tive and inviting parts. We shall not, however, feel precluded from 
proceeding again with our original purpose, especially, should the 
work not appear in the bookstores of this country. 
It contains, indeed, the principal wonders of geology ; but it would 
be great injustice to consider it as a mere collection of mirabilia. It 
embraces a regular system of geology, exhibiting its leading facts, and 
clearly elucidating its philosophy, the latter being the great object of 
the work, to which the facts, as a basis, are only auxiliary. 
The arrangement is, from the alluvial and diluvial down through 
the tertiary, secondary and transition to the primary rocks, and all 
the igneous formations ; ending with the actual ignivomous mouths, 
as they appear in the existing volcanos. The form of lectures (of 
which there are eight) is preserved, with the appropriate style an 
address, an with the references to the objects presented by way of 
illustration. 
