XVUl 
PREFACE. 
^ presented as having taken place previous to the existing order of 
things, and it is assumed that the present races of animals and 
vegetables, the companions of Man, did not exist on the globe 
during any of the antecedent epochs. But the most sincere 
friend of Revelation need be under no alarm, even should he be 
anxious to establish the authority of bis Bible over a wider field 
than the Moral History df our race. If the Sacred Historian 
be considered as referring to the earlier aeras in the commence- 
ment of his narrative only, In the beginnings God created the 
Heaven and the Earth,” and to have contemplated, in what 
follows, the creation of the animals and vegetables of the Mo- 
dern Epoch, it will be found that the deductions of science and 
the records of inspiration harmonize, — >as the Word and the 
Works of God must do, if rightly interpreted. The question, 
indeed, lies within very narrow bounds. Are the Zoological and 
Geolocrical Epochs established as true in science ? If those who 
are qualified to judge shall pronounce in the affirmative, then 
must every interpretation of that brief portion of the sacred 
page, inconsistent therewith, be rejected as spurious, and the 
advocates of error consigned to occupy a page in the History 
of Prejudice, along with the persecutors of Galileo. 
There is one bed occurring in England, and fruitful in 
the remains of animals, denominated Crags the relations of 
which seem as yet imperfectly understood. By some it is 
supposed to be identical with the upper marine formation 
of the Penult Epoch ; by others as a newer deposite, but 
still older than any of the members of the Modern Epoch. 
Even in the 99th Number of the Mineral Conchology, Mr 
SowERBY, under the article Pecten recondituSs seems to view it 
as of the same zoological era with the London Clay. Judging 
from specimens of recent species of shells from the Crag, and 
the evidence of portions of the bones of the mammoth, an ex- 
tinct quadruped of the Modern Epoch, having been found asso- 
ciated with the shells, the author is inclined to view it as a Ma- 
rine Diluvium belonging to the present era. 
In the enumeration of British Animals contained in this vo- 
lume, the author has referred to the extinct or fossil species so 
