PREFACE.
Last written, and generally last read, a Preface has nevertheless become so integral a part of every book, that I may presume, I trust, upon the attention of my readers while I ask them to indulge me with a little prefatory egotism.
This book of mine goes forth into the world with many misgivings on the part of its author. How he came to write it was thus-wise. He was settled in a quiet country town in Cambridgeshire, Royston to wit, as a DissentingMinister; around him he found a number of young persons, who did not believe they had “finished their education” because they had left school, and who were anxious to avoid the usual littleness and small talk of such towns, by earnest attention to actual study. And so it came to pass that a Geological class was formed, which, meeting every week, afforded real stimulus for private work, and led to the consultation of the best standard works, happily available through the well-conditioned library of the town.
The result of those classes is this little book. What is written here was mostly, if not all, said there; and, urged to publish, the author feels a pleasure in dedicating this book to the class, composed almost entirely of young ladies, who found in these studies one of their chiefdelights, and whose private collections have been greatly assisted by the hints thus obtained.
I do not pretend toteach the Science of Geology; I aspire simply to give a taste for this noble and elevating physical study; and, imperfect as this little manual, written in the few hours of capricious leisure snatched from an incessant strain of engagements, must be, I shall only be too happy, if one and another lay asidemybook, and go up higher to Lyell, Sedgwick, Buckland, Murchison, Ansted, Miller, and others.
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 contactfrequently 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 closethis 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.
W. G. B.
W. G. B.
W. G. B.
Manchester,July, 1855.
Manchester,July, 1855.
Manchester,July, 1855.
Manchester,
July, 1855.