PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



THE object of the present work is to furnish the student of 

 Geology and the general reader with a compendious account 

 of the leading principles and facts of the vast and ever- 

 increasing science of Palaeontology. In carrying out this 

 object, all superfluous details have been rigidly excluded, 

 and the Author has endeavoured to restrict himself entirely 

 to those facts which are absolutely necessary to any one 

 who would study Palaeontology as a department of science, 

 sufficiently distinct to stand alone, and yet most closely con- 

 nected with the sciences of Zoology and Botany on the one 

 hand, and with Geology on the other hand. 



In the First Part of the work is given a general account 

 of the principles upon which the palseontological observer 

 proceeds. 



In the Second Part of the work, Palaeozoology, or the 

 past history of the Animal Kingdom, is treated of ; and here 

 much more space has been devoted to the Invertebrate than 

 to the Vertebrate groups upon the ground that it is chiefly, 

 or almost exclusively, with the former that the ordinary 

 palaeontological student has to deal. 



The Third Part of the work gives a brief and very gen- 

 eral view of Palaeobotany, or the past history of the Vegetable 

 Kingdom. This department of the subject has not been 



