In a "Natural History of England," published towards the end of the last century, it is gravely observed that at Bethersden in Kent, a kind of stone is found full of shells, "_which is a proof that shells and the animals we find in them living, have no necessary connexion_." Another amusing instance of the ignorance on such subjects which prevailed at no remote period, occurs in a "History of the County of Surrey," in which it is stated that in a search for coal near Guildford the borers broke, and "this was thought by Mr. Peter Lely, the Astrologer, to have been the work of subterranean spirits, who wrenched off the augers of the miners, lest their secret haunts should be invaded." But in the latter part of the seventeenth century, there were several eminent men in England who were greatly in advance of the age in which they lived, and strenuously exerted themselves to discover and promulgate the true principles of Geology. Among these, Dr. Martin Lister, physician to Queen Anne, was one of the most distinguished. This accomplished naturalist, in his great work on shells, which remains to this day a splendid monument of his labours, and of the talents and filial affection of his two daughters, by whom all the plates were engraved, figures and describes many fossil shells as real animal productions, and carefully compares them with recent species. He also recognised the distinction of strata by the organic remains they contain; and to him the honour is due of having first suggested the construction of geological maps;[4] he was likewise well acquainted with the position and extent of the Chalk and other strata of the South of England.[5] [4] See Notes on the Progress of Geology in England, by W. H. Fitton, M.D. &c. _Philos. Mag._ vols. i. and ii. for 1832 and 1833. [5] This celebrated physician and British geologist died in 1712, and was interred in the old church at Clapham; where a tablet to his memory is affixed to the outside of the north wall of St. Paul's Chapel. From the foreign writers, who at an early period had obtained some correct notions of the structure of our planet, and of the nature of the revolutions it had undergone, I select the following beautiful and philosophical illustration of the physical mutations to which the surface of the earth is perpetually subjected. It is from an Arabic manuscript of the thirteenth century;[6] the narrative is supposed to be related by Rhidhz, an allegorical personage. [6] Quoted by Sir C. Lyell in his "Principles of Geology."