Possibly my stand-point as a minister of religion may have given unconsciously a too theological tone to some of the chapters, especially the last; if such is the case, I beg leave to apologise for such an error by the candid statement, that I have come into contact frequently with minds who have not hesitated to express the doubts I have endeavoured to resolve. I am quite sure that if we, whose calling is with the greatest and the deepest truths that can touch the heart of the real world in which we live and move and have our being, encourage those whom we meet in the free intercourse of social life, to express their doubts, however painful the form of that expression may sometimes be, we shall be far better prepared to meet the wants of our age than if we shut ourselves up in our studies, and exclude ourselves by conventional devices from God’s great world of thought and action that is vibrating so palpably around us, many of whose most painful throbs are occasioned by a supposed contradiction between Science and Scripture. At the feet of the Master I desire to serve, I lay this little book, beseeching Him to regard it as a labour of love, and to use it as an aid to the faith of others in the inspired books of Nature and of Revelation. Removed from the happy town where this book was written, it only remains to add, that for many of the fossils figured in the following pages I am indebted to the kindness of the Rev. Mr. Meeke, at that time the Unitarian Minister of Royston, whose cabinet was always open to my use, and whose courtesy and catholic kindness I thus desire to record; while to Miss Butler, one of my Geological class, I am indebted for all the drawings and devices which will doubtless make this book more attractive than it could otherwise have been. In the words of Archdeacon Hare, I close this brief prelection: “So imperfectly do we yet understand the redemption wrought for us by Christ; and so obstinate are we in separating what God has united, as though it were impossible for the Tree of Knowledge to stand beside the Tree of Life. Yet in the redeemed world they do stand side by side, and their arms intermingle and intertwine, so that no one can walk under the shade of the one, but he will also be under the shade of the other.” W. G. B. MANCHESTER, _July, 1855_. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE INTRODUCTORY 1 CHAPTER II. PRELIMINARIES 15 CHAPTER III. THE ANCIENT EPOCH 33 CHAPTER IV. THE PALÆOZOIC PERIOD 50