Preliminary Observations.

It is my object, in the following work, to travel over ground which has as yet been little explored, and to make my reader acquainted with a species of Remains which, though absolutely necessary for understanding the history of the globe, have been hitherto almost uniformly neglected.

As an antiquary of a new order, I have been obliged to learn the art of decyphering and restoring these remains, of discovering and bringing together, in their primitive arrangement, the scattered and mutilated fragments of which they are composed, of reproducing, in all their original proportions and characters, the animals to which these fragments formerly belonged, and then of comparing them with those animals which still live on the surface of the earth ; an art which is almost unknown, and which presupposes, what had scarcely been obtained before, an acquaintance with those laws which regulate the coexistence of the forms by which the different parts of organized beings are distinguished, I had next to prepare myself for these enquiries by others of a far more extensive kind, respecting the animals which still exist.