6 
favourably attended to, when you consider, that, without your assist- 
ance, the pleasure I have promised myself, in my long-proposed 
torn", will be considerably diminished : for what, to an inquisitive 
mind, can be more mortifying, than to have the curiosity excited to 
the highest pitch, without acquiring a single point, on which even 
conjecture may be reasonably founded? 
LETTER II. 
VESTIGES OF THE INHABITANTS OF A FORMER WORLD LIME- 
STONE AND MARBLE MEDALS OF CREATION PLEASURES 
AFFORDED BY THIS SCIENCE ANIMALS IN THE FORMER 
WORLD DIFFERENT FROM THOSE OF THE PRESENT. 
To comply with the request you have made, will give me real 
satisfaction; since, I am confident, should my endeavours prove 
equal to the undertaking, that I shall open to you a source of inex- 
haustible pleasure. For, not only the country through which you 
are now journeying, but the greater part of this island, and even of 
the globe, teems with these curiously-formed stones : the remains of 
those beings, which, many ages since, depended, for their existence, 
on the various energies of vegetable or animal life. These bodies, 
every atom of which they are constituted existing in a different state 
of combination from that in which they were originally disposed, 
often retain, nearly, the exact figure which they bore in their 
primitive state. But the forms which they present to our view are, 
frequently, so different from any organized being we have any know- 
