2 Pros^;cclui!. 



perceive \vhat conspicuous blanks are yet left lor America to 

 fill up, and especially in those important branches, American 

 geology and American organic remains. This feeling is greatly 

 increased by the occasional taunts and sneers we see directed 

 against us, in foreign scientific works. They are aimed, it is 

 true, against individuals insignificant enough to elude them, and 

 therefore the larger body, the nation, is hit and wounded by 

 them. Neither is there any defence open to us. We send 

 abroad gigantic stories of huge antediluvian lizards, " larger 

 than the largest size ;" and we ourselves are kept upon the 

 stare at our own wonders, from Georgia to Maine, until we find 

 out we have been exulting over the stranded remains of a com- 

 mon spermaceti whale. At this present moment, a huge animal, 

 dug out of the Big-bone-lick, sixty feet long, and twenty-five 

 feet high, is parading through the columns of the European 

 newspapers, after making its progress through our own. This 

 is, what every naturalist supposed it to be, also a great imposi- 

 tion. Within these few days, too, a piece of one of our common 

 coal plants, has been, with great note of preparation, conjured 

 into a petrified rattle-snake. All these jibes and reproaches we 

 ought to have been spared. There ought to have been the ready 

 means amongst us, together with the independence and intelli- 

 gence, to put down these impostures and puerilities as they arose. 

 It is for this object, as well as for the difiusion of the love of 

 science at home, that this monthly journal is about to be esta- 

 blished. Without any previous promise of patronage, it is offered 

 to a numerous and intelligent community, and will seek to win 

 its way to favour, by the industry, accuracy, and fair dealing 

 of its editor, and by the enlightened philosophic spirit, unac- 

 quainted with pedantry, of the minds that will j^reside over it. 

 If it should fail of success, the editor will always be able to make 

 an honourable retreat, and not before he will have done some 

 good. But of this he is not afraid. Sustained by the gifted 

 friends who will come to his aid, both from Europe and from this 

 countiy, the proofs of which he soon hopes to submit to the 

 public, he enters upon the undertaking with cheerful confidence. 

 He sees in the now restrained talents and knowledge around him, 

 and in the ample. domain of American nature, materials, that 

 only wait to be touched, to start into life : and it is upon those 

 talents he will call, and upon the public at large, to assist him 



