PEEFATOEI KEMAEKS BY MES MILLEE 



More than half-a-dozen years have now elapsed since a new 

 edition of the " Foot-prints of the Creator" came into re- 

 quisition, and yet since that time it has failed to be reprinted. 

 Under these circumstances, it becomes necessary to state the 

 reasons for this long delay, as well as those which now render 

 it both practicable and desirable that it should once more be 

 brought before the public. I think it may be safely averred, 

 that the chief cause of its disappearance lay in the failing 

 health of its author. He was not able to keep up with the 

 demands of the time. It had so happened that one of those 

 alternations in the progress of discovery which are commow 

 enough, although we do not always notice them, had just 

 occurred in connection with this book. There are ebbs and 

 flows in the history of every science, which take place on the 

 line where the great ascertained facts of the past and those of 

 the future meet, and where, for the moment, they present an 

 appearance of confusion and conflict. Some such phenomenon, 



