ADVERTISEMENT. 17 



have been collected in public or private cabinets, and to observe at- 

 tentively the sites in which they had been found. He was received 

 everywhere with infinite kindness by persons capable of instructing 

 him, or supplying him with the objects he was in quest of. The ob- 

 servers established in different parts of France and other countries 

 were no less zealous in seconding his views, and in communi- 

 cating to him their discoveries ; and he has thus been enabled 

 to depose, in the Royal Museum at Paris, considerable additions 

 to its scientific stores, or to swell his portfolio with a great number 

 of interesting drawings, which foi-m the materials of the present 

 edition. 



Through the means of all these aids, a vast number of objects 

 already known have been studied, not only with more care, but an 

 infinity of new ones have been added to those with which we were 

 already acquainted : at present, the number of fossil hippopotamuses 

 amounts to four; that of rhinoceros to the same number; that of 

 crocodiles to six or seven, without speaking of the new genus of 

 the ichtyosaurus. In the environs of Paris alone, the list of lost 

 animals will be increased by two genera, and, perhaps, ten or twelve 

 new species. 



The history of the strata in which fossil bones are imbedded ; of 

 the minerals, shells, and other animal and vegetable productions which 

 accompany them, has also, since 1812, received large and important 

 improvements. 



Learned societies have been formed in different countries, solely 

 with the view of throwing light on the history of this part of the 

 history of the globe. The Geological Society of London has already 

 published several quarto volumes of its memoirs ; Mr. Greenough, 

 and several of its most distinguished members, have travelled over the 

 British Isles and the principal countries of Europe. These researches 

 have produced a splendid geological chart of England, which shews 

 the analogy and connexion of the, strata of that country with those of 

 France. Our French geologists have not been backward in this great 

 movement ; a friend and colleague of the author, Mr. Brongniart, a 

 member of the Academy of Sciences, who had taken a principal part 

 in the examination of the earths in the environs of Paris, being occu- 

 pied on a general treatise on positive geology, has visited, in mi 

 nute detail, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and most parts of France, to 

 study their strata. The most interesting of the earths of our en- 

 virons, that which M. Brongniart and Cuvier have named fresh- 

 water earth, has been traced in England by Mr. Webster, in France 



VOL. I. D 



