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advancement of this science. Many gentlemen, indeed, have formed 
large and valuable collections, and must have made many impor- 
tant and valuable observations, but, unfortunately, very few of 
these have been placed before the public eye. Indeed the study has 
been in this country, confined to so small a number of persons, 
that prudential reasons must have had considerable influence, in 
deterring the ingenious observer from risking the expenses of 
publication. 
This culpable neglect of a study fraught with interest, instruction, 
and amusement, is certainly attributable to our not possessing, 
in the English language, any work which famishes a regular and 
connected account of the numerous petrified bodies, which almost 
every where surround us. For want of this kind of information, 
these truly astonishing substances excite, in general, only a mo- 
mentary Avonder ; instead of leading the mind to compare them with 
such living beings as they resemble, and to mark, from the endless 
varpng forms, observable, even in their spoils, the number of beings 
which once existed, but whose living archetypes are now totally 
unknown. 
Surely it is not too much to hope, that a faithful history of these 
substances ; tracing them, where it is possible, to their analogous 
living beings ; and where not, to such as they most resemble ; point- 
ing out, according to rational conjecture, the modes in which they 
probably existed, and the stations which they have been appointed 
to fill ; and tracing the influence which the changes, suffered by 
this part of animal creation, has had on the globe we inhabit ; may 
excite the admirers of nature again to turn their attention to these, 
not her least beautiful, nor her least admirable works. 
The present period is surely auspicious to this hope. Mineralogy 
has already obtained a firm and wide footing ; and the study of ani- 
mated nature must be daily gaining admirers, from the pleasing 
illustrations of Mr. Sowerby, Mr. Donovan, the scientific pub- 
