MEMOIRS

OF

ICHTHYOSAURI

AND

PLESIOSAURI,

EXTINCT MONSTERS

OF THE ANCIENT EARTH

WITH 28 PLATES

COPIED FROM SPECIMENS IN THE AUTHOR'S COLLECTION OF FOSSIL ORGANIC REMAINS

BY

THOMAS HAWKINS, Esq. F.G.S.

&c. &c. &c.

I believe in, and bear humble testimony to the Scriptures, that they are the "words of everlasting life" and "the wisdom of God." I cannot pretend to understand much of them, for reasons which they themselves offer, much less can I presume upon their explanation; but I owe to myself and the reader to say - to prevent any misconception of the spirit and letter of this book - that I think the Mosaic cosmogony intelligible upon this hypothesis :-our creation is not a principle, but from the fourth day or generation of Time, when the lights in the firmament were made "to give light upon the earth." The antecedent history of the planet, as written by Moses, demonstrable by the soundest physics unshrouds but the gaunt skeleton of the pre-Adamite epoch, to the clearer comprehension of which nothing can so well serve as the accumulation of Fossil Organic Remains.

LONDON:

PUBLISHED BY RELFE AND FLETCHER, 17, CORNHILL

MDCCCXXXIV