ADVERTISEMENT. 19 



Finally, the history of ancient races of people, a basis so necessary 

 to the formation, of any positive opinion on the history of the globe 

 itself, has also had light shed on it, in these latter years, by the 

 researches of several German and French writers, and by the ex- 

 tracts given to us by some learned Englishmen from the sacred books 

 of the Hindoos ; or rather those studies and extracts have proved 

 more and more how recently those races of people without ex- 

 ception, had been established at the time when history first speaks 

 of them, and how vain and fabulous are the traditions, which ascribe 

 to them ages and dynasties without number. 



All tilings agree more and more every day to shew the truth of a 

 great catastrophe, which has changed the face of continents, de- 

 stroyed races of living beings, transported to great distances the 

 scanty remnants of those it had spared, and enabled us to follow the 

 traces several such catastrophes which preceded it. 



It is with these numerous materials the author has undertaken this 

 new edition, in which he will make known all he has collected, and 

 all that others have described, since 1S42, relative either to fossil 

 bones, or to the osteology of living species, bordering on those from 

 which the bones are derived. 



Not confining himself to oviparous and viviparous quadrupeds, he 

 will speak of the cetaceae, and hopes to be able to furnish on the oste- 

 ology of this family, which is so important to be accurately known, 

 many facts, which still appear new, notwithstanding the recent pub- 

 lication of the works of Camper and Albers. 



The author has also endeavoured to put the whole work in better 

 order, and to free it from that fragmentary and successive character 

 in which the Memoir composing the first edition had been drawn up ; 

 each fact and each i f1 ea will be found in its proper place, so that it may 

 be read and studied at once, without obliging the reader to revert to 

 or to rectify them by means of the new ideas and supplements con- 

 contained in the subsequent Memoirs. 



He could have wished to arrange the figures in the same order, so 

 that they would follow each other in the plates as they are mentioned 

 in the text ; but to do this, it would have been necessary to re-en- 

 grave all the old plates, a labour which would have occasioned an 

 expense quite out of proportion with the advantages of such an 

 arrangement. Perhaps, too, the necessity for looking for those figures 

 in the plates through which they are dispersed will call for more at- 

 tention; and besides, it will be an easy matter for the reader to mark 

 them, for those purposes of arrangment most suitable to his studies. 



