518 FOSSIL INVERTEBRATED ANIMALS. 



ciencies of our labours than ourselves, we are inclined to hope 

 that we have, in these pages, performed all that we proposed 

 to perform at the outset of our undertaking — namely, to give 

 an abstract of every thing important in the discoveries in fossil 

 osteology ; and to present as accurate an idea as possible of 

 those bodies found in the fossil state, whether by comparison 

 with their living analogues^ or by simple description. It was 

 for this purpose that we have thought it right^ after our 

 generalities on the invertebrata, to take especial notice of a 

 few of the most remarkable families or genera. To render our 

 work, in this way, as satisfactory as possible, we shall subjoin 

 a tabular view of all the classes, orders, and genera, hitherto 

 found in the fossil state; which, with some little alteration, we 

 have adopted from the Synopsis of M. de France, appended to 

 his Essay on Petrifactions. 



Respecting the execution of our task, we have but another 

 word to add. — We claim no pretensions whatsoever to origi- 

 nality, but labour has not been spared ; the best authorities 

 have been consulted and collated carefully, and their substance 

 transfused into our pages, as far as the prescribed extent of 

 those pages would permit. We have already amply acknow- 

 ledged our obligations to the Baron Cuvier : in all that part of 

 our performance, previous to our notice of the fossil fish, his 

 great work on the Ossemens Fossiles has been our chief guide, 

 and the storehouse from which our materials have been princi- 

 pally selected. On this portion of our labours we may be 

 permitted to observe, without vanity, that we have been the 

 first to attempt a transfer, into our own language, of the prin- 

 cipal substance of that immortal work. That this might have 

 been done much more completely, and in a style far superior, 

 none can be more ready to admit than the author of this super- 

 ficial sketch ; but he must claim some little merit to himself for 

 having done it at all ; and those who are best acquainted with 

 the original, can best appreciate the extreme difficulty of any 

 attempt to condense the matter of five quarto volumes, whose 



