PREFACE 
In submitting this Work to the public, the author hopes he is 
rendering a service to the science of Geology, by presenting its ad- 
mirers with a Systematic and Stratagraphic View of all the edited 
British Fossils. As since the time of Lhwyd and Woodward, no 
attempt of the kind (that he is aware of) has been made, such a 
Work as this must therefore be a desideratum. The former pub¬ 
lished, in 1699, his Lythophylacii Britanici Ichnographia, 99 (a 
second edition of which was published by Iluddesford, in 1760), 
containing a description, in Latin, of 1,766 Fossils in the Ashmolean 
Museum, Oxford, accompanied by engraved Figures. The latter 
formed a Catalogue of Fossils in his own collection, which was pub¬ 
lished after his decease, in 1729, entitled, “An Attempt towards a 
Natural History of the Fossils of England .” These works are now 
very scarce, and, excepting the figures in Lhwyd, are nearly useless. 
In constructing the present Synopsis, the author has carefully col¬ 
lated all the lists of Fossils published in recent Geological Works, 
and has omitted nothing in his power to render it complete; he is, 
however, aware that it is still necessarily imperfect, and must remain 
so, until the whole surface and substrata of the kingdom be scientifi¬ 
cally investigated. The Papers of Drs. Buckland and Fitton, Messrs. 
Conybeare, De la Beche, Lyell, Murchison, Sedgwick, Webster, and 
other Geologists, published in the Transactions of the Geological 
Society and Annals of Philosophy, and the Works of Mr. Mantel! on 
Sussex, and Mr. John Phillips on the Yorkshire Coast, together with 
the Messrs. Sowerby’s splendid Work on Mineral Conchology, have 
contributed largely towards making known the Fossils imbedded in 
our Strata; such examples, it is hoped, will be followed, until a 
perfect Catalogue of British Organic Remains is obtained. 
