XVlll 
INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 
our assistance the sciences of anatomy and botany, 
we can even restore anew the forms of the animals 
and vegetables which flourished on the earth, when 
our present continents were engulfed beneath the 
depths of the ocean. 
The interest and importance of this branch of 
natural philosophy are now so highly appreciated 
by all, save those minds which are alike destitute 
of all capacity and relish for intellectual pursuits, 
that I feel it to be wholly unnecessary for me to 
offer one remark on its practical utility, or on the 
lofty and sublime pleasures which its investigations 
aflbrd. An eminent astronomer has, however, cited, 
as an example of the value of physical knowledge 
in teaching us to avoid attempting impossibilities, so 
remarkable an instance in which ignorance of the 
first principles of geology led to an expensive and 
abortive undertaking, in a part of Sussex which we 
shall hereafter have occasion to describe, that I am 
induced to subjoin the relation in the words of the 
distinguished author. “ It is not many years since 
an attempt was made to establish a colliery at Bex- 
hill, in Sussex. Tlie appearance of thin seams and 
sheets of fossil wood and wood coal, with some 
other indications similar to what occur in the neigh- 
bourhood of the great coal beds in the nortli of 
England, having led to the sinking of a shaft, and 
the erection of machinery on a scale of vast expense; 
not less than 80,000/. are said to have been laid out 
in this project, wliich, it is almost needless to add, 
proved comjfletely abortive, as every geologist would 
at once have declared it must : the whole assemblage 
of geological facts heing adverse to the existence of a 
