A friend has this day suggested to me, that expressions are used in 

 certain parts of this Treatise, whicli some persons consider as speak- 

 ing too confidently respecting Physical Phenomena, as if they could 

 not have been otherwise disposed, had such been the will of the 

 Creator; or which seem to imply that His method of proceeding 

 under former systems, must of necessity have been the same as those 

 which we witness in the growth of living species of Animals and 

 Vegetables, and in the laws that now regulate the material World. 

 I am not conscious of having used any such expressions, but lest 

 I should have inadvertently done so, I gladly take this opportunity 

 of stating, that I accord to the fullest extent with such persons 

 respecting the Omnipotence of the Creator, and admit with them, 

 that had it been his pleasure, all things that exist might have been 

 the immediate results of an Almighty fiat. My only endeavour 

 has been to shew, that as far as we may venture to argue on such a 

 subject, from the analogies afforded by the organic and inorganic 

 parts of the world around us, the proofs of design which we dis- 

 cover in the fossil relics of former systems of Creation, differ in no 

 respect from those drawn by Paley and all writers on Physico 

 Tlieology, from the structure of living organic bodies, and the other 

 actual phenomena of the natural World, in evidence of the Wisdom 

 and Power, and Goodness of the Deity. 



Oxford, 

 April 4, 1837. 



