science were crude and disorderly. At length, half a century having been thus occupied, it was agreed to found a society, the sole object of which to be the accumulation of geological fact, divested of all hypothesis and self-dependant. This society, the parent of many similar ones founded in several of the provinces, owes its Origin to the exertions of some half-persons and to his late Majesty, and may, yet, redeem the cause of sound principle and assist in the triumph of pure religion. Its income-I speak of the Geological Society of London- its income very considerable and still increasing, its officers genera1ly men of high station in the social and literary world, and with the good wishes - nay. the patronage of government, what should hinder its usefulness? Its “Transactions”"- the records of its labours - published to the world and the high example of its members, must have a salutary effect, and when the time arrives for the summing up of the great evidences that it has gathered together, if faithful to its purpose the whole world will abide the issue in silent expectation.
    This Society was the remote cause of the book I now commend to my reader's indulgence, and since I am by no means sanguine of his praise I must acquaint him with the disadvantages under which it was written, that if it should unfortunately incur his censure, he may know how to qualify it at the least if not to forego its expression altogether. The Collection of which it treats - of the chief specimens of which my plates are well descriptive - weighs more than twenty tons, occupies a superficies of two hundred feet by twenty, and, in pretension of every sort, transcends all the collections in the world. The suspicion of egotism is contemptible-the reader will understand me when I tell him that the sight of about a tenth part of this Collection, which I brought to London two years ago, surprised and delighted so much the most distinguished geologists of our time that I was encouraged to humour my oryctological hobby until it secured me, the most valuable aggregation of fossil organic remains extant. This stupendous treasure was gathered by me from every part of England arranged, and its multitudinous features elaborated from the hard limestone by my own hands. A tyro in collecting at twelve years of age, I then boasted of all the antiques that were come-at-able in my neighbourhood, but finding that every body beat my cabinet of coins and pottery I addressed myself to worm-eaten books and at last to fossils. And such was the intensity of my pursuit of them and such the carelessness of my natural guardians in respect to my education, that my ardour and a liberal allowance of money secured me a very fine collection before I numbered twenty summers and winters, when I came into possession of my father's household-gods, to which I was a stranger until his demise. From that time to the present my inclinations, following the same channel, have earned me from one mental pleasure and study to another in, such rapid succession that I have had scarce time to think much less to study. Therefore, the volume now before the reader has but modest claim,-indeed, the title anticipates it-memoir signifying a familiar exposition of one's own ideas in a latitudinarian degree,-and is sufficiently descriptive of the thing proposed-the assemblage of facts relative to Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri, merely. To this end I had but to study their remains as an anatomist, and, if I may boast, that branch of science has not been neglected by me, and to watch vigilantly the progress of my plates, which are, after all that is said, the best interpreters of the original matter, if carefully examined. But the determination of the most remarkable individual difference, by which the species should be known, devolved upon me - a serious responsibility as the genera had their historians but having ascertained their consent to my views upon the subject, for Messrs. Conybeare and De la Beche published their's during the infancy of our acquaintance with these extraordinary creatures, I at once referred it to the extremities.
    Naturalists wonder, if they bear not in mind the peculiar difficulties that encounter the sauriologist when he grapples subjects of this kind. The object - excessively rare - comes before him divested of the properties of living animals; he sees but the osseous relics of beings that, without analogue in the present creation, set all common methods of reason at defiance and leave him no choice but the exercise of opinion or its abnegation. Now, mark the consequences of the latter postulate; the question sent a-begging returns with a Babel of answers and is consigned with the good and bad company it has picked up to oblivion, while the mover of it, tacking the name of one of his friends to the generic appellation lays the flattering unction to his own and another's soul at the same moment that he betrays science. This, the records of