Fossil organic remains are the relics of a primeval world long since gone past, proclaiming with a loud voice the instability of earthly affairs, and impressing upon the minds of those who seriously consider them, sentiments of piety and feelings of devotion. If the antiquary digs from among the ruins of Herculaneum a piece of ancient money, a vase, or a statue, we rejoice with him, in finding the mode of life, the manners and arts of an ancient people, placed before our eyes: If he finds an old record, illustrative of the history of his country, however limited in extent that country may be, we are grateful to him for the particle of knowledge he has added to our store; but if, among the ruins of the common country of the human race, we linger at the great sepulchre of animated beings destroyed by the hand of fate, who can look upon it without sentiments of piety! It is not here the statues of Polycletus that we admire, but the admirable monuments of the workmanship of Nature, taken from the ruins of the great Herculeum overwhelmed by the ocean, that we look upon with feelings of the deepest wonder and devotion. PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. The attention of naturalists was early directed to the investigation of the fossil organic remains so generally and abundantly distributed throughout the strata of which the crust of the Earth is composed. It is not, as some writers now imagine, entirely a modern study; for even so early as the time of Leibnitz, we find that philosopher drawing and describing fossil bones. After this period it continued to interest individuals, and engage the particular attention of societies and academies. The Royal Society of London, by the Memoirs of Sloane, Collinson, Lister, Derham, Baker, Grew, Hunter, Jacobs, Plott, Camper, and many others, afforded satisfactory proofs of the importance attached to this branch of Natural History by philosophers in England; and the Memoirs of M. Graydon, in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, shew that it was not entirely neglected in Ireland. On the continent of Europe the natural history of petrifactions was also much studied, as appears from the Memoirs of Hollman, Beckman, and Blumenbach, in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Gottingen;--of Gmelin, Pallas, Herrmann, Chappe, in the Memoirs of the Imperial Academy of Sciences of Petersburg;--of Geoffroi, Buffon, Daubenton, Faujas St Fond, and others of the old French Academy of Sciences;--of Astruc and Riviere, of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Montpellier;--of Collini of the Academia Theodoro-Palatina, at Manheim, &c. But the geognostical relations of the rocks in which these organic remains are contained were but ill understood, until Werner pointed out the mode of investigating them. His interesting and important views were circulated from Freyberg, by the writings and conversations of his pupils, and have