Miscellanies. 391 



permi this merits to rest here. They will not forget, that his own 

 original investigations have been among the most successful of the 

 age, and their results among the most brilliant obtained by geol- 

 ogists. 



" Commencing with the human epoch, he proceeds through the va- 

 rious systems which preceded the creation of man, and the several 

 eras of the gigantic elephant; of the tertiary; the chalk; the weald; 

 the oolite and lias ; the corals ; the carboniferous strata, and the pri- 

 mary rocks, are by turns the subject of instructive and delightful com- 

 ment. The work is illustrated with much taste ; a frontispiece from 

 the huriii of Martin gives a representation of the country of the Igua- 

 nodon, representing these monsters of the ancient world attacking 

 and devouring, each other ; two drawings of corals, tastefully design- 

 ed, and splendidly colored by the pencil of Miss Mantell, form embel- 

 lishments of first-rate beauty and interest, and nearly a hundred wood 

 engravings with colored sections of strata, maps, &c., bestow at once 

 pictorial grace and scientific illustration on the volumes. A work 

 commencing as does this with the most recent periods, and advan- 

 cing to those incalculably remote, — in a word, proceeding from the 

 human epoch and the connection of man and his works with the mu- 

 tations of the earth, through periods in which no traces of mankind 

 are discoverable, but animal and vegetable remains alone occur, down 

 to the primary rocks themselves, in which no organic remains have 

 hitherto been supposed to exist, — comprises a vast, an almost unlim- 

 ited, field of inquiry, and requires in the writer who should justly 

 describe them, qualifications and powers of no common character. 



" Dr. Mantell has acquitted himself admirably of the arduous task 

 which he has chosen ; and, as a valuable collection of scientific data — 

 as an able generalization of facts — as a clear and lucid statement of 

 the chief principles and most important deductions of geology — in 

 short, as a highly valuable and useful epitome of the Encyclopajdia 

 of geological science, we should unhesitatingly recommend this work 

 as superior, in many essential particulars, to any yet published. Its 

 plan displays that lucid arrangement and order which eminently cha- 

 racterize the lectures of the author, and by which he is enabled to 

 render objects, apparently uninviting or repulsive, in the highest de- 

 gree attractive and pleasing : to attract and interest even the gentler 

 sex with studies which philosophers themselves consider abstruse and 

 severe, and thus to show that philosophy is — 



" Not harsh or crabbed, as dull fools suppose, 

 But musical as is Apollo's lute." 



