INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 
“ If we look with wonder upon the mighty remains of human works, 
such as the columns of Palmyra, broken in the midst of the desert ; 
the temples of Pmstum, beautiful in the decay of twenty centuries; 
or the mutilated relics of Greek sculpture in the Acropolis of Athens, 
or in our own museums, as proofs of the genius of artists, and power 
and riches of nations, now passed away; witli how much deeper feeling 
of admiration and astonishmebt must we consider those grand monu- 
ments of nature which mark the revolutions of the globe : continents 
broken into islands ; one land produced, another destroyed ; the bottom 
of the ocean become a fertile soil ; whole races of animals extinct, and 
the bones and exuviae of one class covered with the remains of another, 
and upon the grave of past generations — the marble or rocky tomb, as 
it were, of a former animated world — new generations rising, and order 
and harmony established, and a system of life and beauty produced out 
of chaos and death : proving the infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, 
of the Great Cause of all things.” 
Sir Humphry Davy's Last Days of a Philosopher. 
To the mind which is wholly unacquainted with 
the nature and results of geological enquiries, and 
has been led to believe that the globe we inhabit 
is in the state in which it was originally created, 
and that, with the exception of the effects of an 
universal deluge, its surface has undergone no ma- 
terial change, many of the phenomena described in 
the following pages will appear marvellous and in- 
credible, and the inferences drawn from their in- 
vestigation be considered as the vagaries of the 
imagination, rather than the legitimate deductions 
