P RE F AC E. 



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 carry- 

 ing out this object, all superfluous details have been 

 rigidly excluded, and the Author has endeavoured to 

 restrict himself entirely to those facts which are abso- 

 lutely necessary to any one who would study Palaeon- 

 tology as a department of science, sufficiently distinct 

 to stand alone, and yet most closely connected 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 ac- 

 count of the principles upon which the palaeontological 

 observer proceeds. 



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

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

 here much more space has been devoted to the Inver- 

 tebrate 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 

 general view of Palaeobotany, or the past history of the 



