PRELUDE TO DESCRIPTIVE GEOLOGY. 543 



fications and arrangements of our best geologists, 

 the immense studies of fossil anatomy by Cuvier anjd 

 others, have been conducted mainly by means of 

 collections of specimens. They are more important 

 in this study than in botany, because specimens 

 which contain important geological information are 

 both more rare and more permanent. Plants, 

 though each individual is perishable, perpetuate 

 and diffuse their kind ; while the organic impres- 

 sion on a stone, if lost, may never occur in a second 

 instance; but, on the other hand, if it be preserved 

 in the museum, the individual is almost as perma- 

 nent in this case, as the species in the other. 



I shall proceed to notice another mode in which 

 such information was conveyed. 



Sect. 3. First Construction of Geological Maps. 



DR. LISTER, a learned physician, sent to the Royal 

 Society, in 1683, a proposal for maps of soils or 

 minerals ; in which he suggested that in the map of 

 England, for example, each soil and its boundaries 

 might be distinguished by colour, or in some other 

 way. Such a mode of expressing and connecting 

 our knowledge of the materials of the earth, was, 

 perhaps, obvious, when the mass of knowledge be- 

 came considerable. In 1720. Fontenelle, in his 

 observations on a paper of De Reaumur's, which 

 contained an account of a deposit of fossil-shells in 

 Touraine, says, that in order to reason on such 



