NOTICE. 



Pal^ontological researches forming so essential a part of geological 

 investigations, such as those now in progress by the Geological Survey 

 of the United Kingdom, the accompanying plates and descriptions of 

 British Fossils have been prepared as part of the Geological Memoirs. 

 They constitute a needful portion of the publications of the Geological 

 Survey, and are taken from specimens in the public collections, or lent 

 to the Survey by those anxious to advance this branch of the public 

 service. Although numerous drawings had previously been made, and 

 engravings from them considerably advanced, it was not thought expe- 

 dient to commence their publication until the large collections of the 

 Survey could be well examined, which a want of the needful space 

 has, until the present time, considerably retarded. This impediment 

 to progress is now being removed, and when the collections can be 

 properly displayed in the New Museum of Practical Geology, in 

 Jermyn Street, it is hoped that the public will have an opportunity 

 of gradually obtaining, in a convenient manner and at small cost, a 

 work illustrating some of the more important forms of animal and 

 vegetable life there preserved, and which have been entombed during 

 the lapse of geological time in the area occupied by the British islands. 



The plan proposed to be followed in the work, of which the two 

 Decades now published form a part, is as follows : — 



To figure in elaborate detail, as completely as possible, a selection of 

 fossils, illustrative of the genera and more remarkable species of all 



