Vlll PREFACE. 



Happily, the mists of delusion, and the prejudices consequent on long- 

 cherished and preconceived notions, are rapidly clearing away before the 

 lucid, and delightful, and unanswerable statements and views of the galaxy 

 of learned, and scientific, and pious geologists of the present day. I trust 

 I may be permitted to quote from one of these a most happily conceived 

 and beautifully expressed passage : " How then can they, by whom the 

 magnificent truths of elapsed time and successive generations have been put in 

 clear and strong evidence how can they be expected to yield to false notions 

 of philosophy, and narrow views of religion, the secure conviction that, in the 

 formation of the crust of the earth, Almighty wisdom was glorified, the per- 

 mitted laws of nature were in beneficent operation, and thousands of 

 beautiful and active things enjoyed their appointed life, long before man 

 was formed of the dust of the ancient earth, and endowed with a divine 

 power of comprehending the wonders of its construction ? It is something 

 worse than philosophical prejudice, to close the eyes of reason on the evi- 

 dence which the earth offers to the eyes of sense ; it is a dangerous theolo- 

 gical error, to put in unequal conflict a few ill-understood words of the 

 Pentateuch, and the thousands of facts which the finger of God has plainly 

 written on the book of nature ; folly, past all excuse, to suppose that the 

 moral evidence of an eternity of the future should be weakened by admit- 

 ting the physical evidence for an immensity of the past."* 



It remains for me to add a few words only, as deprecatory of severe cri- 

 ticism. No one can be more aware than myself of the numerous errors 

 and deficiencies everywhere pervading this small volume : for these I urge 

 nothing, even in extenuation. For myself, it is sufficient that I have 

 derived from its preparation much information, great gratification. I 

 entertain no morbid sensitiveness respecting the fate that awaits it. With 

 our prince of lexicographers I may say, " I dismiss it with frigid tranquil- 

 lity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise." 



The necessity created, by preparing such a book for the press, for care- 

 fully looking into and examining the opinions of various authors on the 

 same subject, has made me acquainted with many works which, otherwise, 

 I never might have perused; and I have, from this circumstance only, 

 reaped a rich reward of the purest pleasure ; and, though critics may in 

 unmeasured terms condemn, it is more than probable that 



" Seu me tranquilla senectus 

 Exspectat, seu mors atris circumvolat alls ; 

 Dives, inops, Romee, seu fors ita, jusserit, exsul ; 

 Quisquis erit vitse, scribam, color." 



* Professor Phillips. 



