30 
lications of Dr. Shaw, and the ingenious lectures on Comparative 
Anatomy by Mr. Macartney; not to particularize the numerous 
interesting observations of Mr. Home, Mr. Corse, and various other 
ardent admirers of natural history. The science then, the study of 
which is here intended to be promoted, and which not only deserves 
to be considered as supplementary to zoology and mineralogy, but 
as the medium by which the one may be connected with the other, 
cannot surely but participate in the attention which they obtain. 
LETTER IV. 
OPINIONS RESPECTING THE ORIGIN OF THESE BODIES PLASTIC 
POWER TRANSLATION OF SEMINAL PRINCIPLES ...... GROWTH 
OF STONES TERMS FIGURED STONES DILUVIAN STONES 
FOSSILS, EXTRANEOUS OR ADVENTITIOUS NEW TERMS PRO- 
POSED SECONDARY FOSSILS, VEGETABLE OR ANIMAL FOSSILIA 
VULGO DICTA IMPRESSIONS CASTS FIGURED STONES. 
To stumble at the very threshold, is, I acknowledge, rather un- 
graceful, and not very promising; but remember that sometimes, 
the blame may lay in the stumbling block, and not in the man. 
This, I trust, will prove to be the case, in the present instance. I 
have to speak of substances, which, in my opinion, have never yet 
been designated by appropriate terms ; and to treat of a science, 
' which has hardly yet acquired a peculiar name. 
Until within these last hundred years, the nature of the sub- 
stances, which form the subject of our present inquiry, was, as we 
have seen, so little understood ; that the most vague, and unphiloso- 
