The serious contemplation of these natural objects affords a great source of pleasure to 
an inquisitive mind. They exhibit in clear characters the wisdom and goodness of the 
Deity. They lead hack our ideas to the most remote ages of time, when these, now pe- 
trified substances, answered, by their various functions, some important purpose in the 
scale of animated existence. It must afford rational pleasure to reflect upon the means 
by which these exuviae have, for thousands of years, been preserved, without being totally 
destroyed : how some fragments as thin as paper, and equally fine with the hairs of our 
head, still retain their original shape and most minute configurations. A mind led into 
a train of thinking upon these curious parts of the natural kingdom of God, must enjoy 
more solid satisfaction than can be procured from some of the more noisy pursuits in life. 
These objects, although heedlessly trodden under foot by the rustic and unthinking 
clown, are far from being useless in medicine and some of the sciences ; they open to the 
lovers of Natural History an extensive field for the most rational contemplation ; and 
they raise the mind to grand and elevated conceptions of the Great Creator and Preserver 
of all things. — Ure, History of Rutherglen, 8fc. 1793. p. 333. 
PRINTED BY RICHARD AND JOHN E. TAYEOK, 
RED LION COURT, FLEET STREET. 
