Geological Poems. 273 



would probably prove both instructive and amusing to our 

 readers. We have rarely seen in any form a more con- 

 densed exhibition of the principal facts and doctrines of me 

 Wernerian Geology, than are contained in the poetical 

 Geognosy, which, with the Granitogony and the Geolog- 

 icAL Cookery, we now republish with all their appendagas 

 of preface, arguments and notes.— A very few passages in- 

 dicate in the poet an imagination perhaps rather too warm, 

 but we have not thought it worth while to maim the verse 

 by dissecting them out. 



A POETICAL GEOGJYOSY. 



PREFACE. 



The external part or crust of the globe, wherever it has 

 been extensively examined, is composed of different rocks, 

 generally arranged in beds or layers over each other ; and 

 these beds appear to have been consohdated at different 

 epochs. Many of the beds contain remains of extinct gen- 

 era or species of animals ; and certain species are often pe- 

 culiar to certain beds, above or below which they are nev- 

 er observed. Now it is evident that the animals whose re- 

 mains are imbedded in the lower rocks, could not have 

 been cotemporaneous with those found in the upper, by 

 which they are covered : hence the different ages of these 

 rocks are proved. 



The lowest rocks that we are acquainted with contain 

 few or no remains of organic life; but from, their position 

 it is inferred that they have been formed at different peri- 

 ods : the lowest are supposed, with certain limitations, to 

 be the oldest. It is also well deserving attention, that the 

 animal remains in the lower rocks belong exclusively to 

 the simplest forms of organic life ; namely, to moluscous 

 animals and zoophytes ; and that the remains of vertebra- 

 ted animals, or such as possessed a brain and spinal mar- 

 row, never occur in or below the regular coal strata.* 



*This position has been recenUy objected to ; but the author is of opin- 

 ion that its truth has not yet been invalidated. He is also fully convinced 

 that all the writers who have hitherto attempted to apply Werner s arrange- 



