INTRODUCTION. I2/ 



In England, with the exception of Woodward's " Catalogue " 

 of the collection now preserved in Cambridge, there was no 

 general work on fossils. James Parkinson tried to supply this 

 deficiency in his work, Organic Remains of a Former World 

 (1804-11); the epistolary style was selected as the most easy 

 of comprehension, and the most likely to stimulate popular 

 interest in fossils. The first volume gave in forty-eight letters 

 a short history of palaeontological knowledge, an account of the 

 various views about fossils or " Medals of Creation " (a name 

 which Parkinson and others had adopted from Bergman), 

 and a discussion of the surface forms and physical constitution 

 of the earth. Peat, lignite, brown-coal and coal, buried woods, 

 bitumen, etc., were then described according to their pro- 

 perties, their mode of occurrence, state of preservation, and 

 the changes they had passed through. The various fossil 

 woods, leaf-impressions, ferns, stems, branches, and fruits 

 belonging chiefly to Carboniferous and Tertiary times were 

 enumerated and compared with existing types; nine coloured 

 quarto plates complete this volume. 



Parkinson shared in great measure the older conceptions of 

 the " diluvialists " about the origin of fossils; the comparison 

 of fossil and living forms, which he carried out in collaboration 

 with the botanist, J. Edward Smith, led him to the conclusion 

 that the most of the fossil plant types were the products of a 

 warmer climate. Parkinson unfortunately made no attempt to 

 identify the fossil plants according to genus and species, nor 

 did he use the Linnsean method of nomenclature. Hence his 

 work on fossil plants is distinctly behind the almost con- 

 temporaneous publication of Schlotheim. 



The second volume treats of corals, sponges, and crinoids, 

 and comprises twenty-nine letters and nineteen plates. The 

 Linnaean method of nomenclature was introduced into this 

 volume, but was not carried uniformly through the work. 

 In the third volume, with 22 plates, Parkinson had the 

 advantage of fuller reference literature. He could refer to the 

 works of Klein and Leske on Echinoderms, to the writings of 

 Lamarck on Molluscs, to the result of Cuvier's investigations 

 on Vertebrates. We find the author's views considerably 

 expanded in this volume, wherein he becomes more and more 

 convinced that numerous fossil species belonged to extinct 

 forms of life. Moreover, the influence of William Smith's 

 researches had spread amongst English geologists, and taught 



