TO THE READER.
There are chapters in this little volume which will, I am afraid, be deemed too prolix by the general reader, and which yet the geologist would like less were there any portion of them away. They refer chiefly to organisms not hitherto figured nor described, and must owe their modicum of value to that very minuteness of detail which, by critics of the merely literary type, unacquainted with fossils, and not greatly interested in them, may be regarded as a formidable defect, suited to overlay the general subject of the work. Perhaps the best mode of compromising the matter may be to intimate, as if by beacon, at the outset, the more repulsive chapters; somewhat in the way that the servants of the Humane Society indicateto the skater who frequents in winter the lakes in the neighborhood of Edinburgh, those parts of the ice on which he might be in danger of losing himself. I would recommend, then, readers not particularly palæontological, to pass but lightly over the whole of my fourth and fifth chapters, with the latter half of the third, marking, however, as they skim the pages, the conclusions at which I arrive regarding the bulk and organization of the extraordinary animal described, and the data on which these are founded. My book, like an Irish landscape dotted with green bogs, has its portions on which it may be perilous for the unpractised surveyor to make any considerable stand, but across which he may safely take his sights and lay down his angles.
It will, I trust, be found, that in dealing with errors which, in at least their primary bearing, affect questions of science, I have not offended against the courtesies of scientific controversy. True, they are errors which also involve moral consequences. There is a species of superstition which inclines men to take on trust whatever assumes the name of science; and which seems to be a reaction on the old superstition, that had faith in witches, but none in Sir Isaac Newton,and believed in ghosts, but failed to credit the Gregorian calendar. And, owing mainly to the wide diffusion of this credulous spirit of the modern type, as little disposed to examine what it receives as its ancient unreasoning predecessor, the development doctrines are doing much harm on both sides of the Atlantic, especially among intelligent mechanics, and a class of young men engaged in the subordinate departments of trade and the law. And the harm, thus considerable in amount, must be necessarily more than merely considerable in degree. For it invariably happens, that when persons in these walks become materialists, they become also turbulent subjects and bad men. That belief in the existence after death, which forms the distinguishinginstinctof humanity, is too essential a part of man’s moral constitution not to be missed when away; and so, when once fairly eradicated, the life and conduct rarely fail to betray its absence. But I have not, from any consideration of the mischief thus effected, written as if arguments, like cannon-balls, could be rendered more formidable than in the cool state by being made red-hot. I have not even felt, in discussing the question, as if I had a man before me as an opponent; for though mywork contains numerous references to the author of the “Vestiges,” I have invariably thought on these occasions, not of the anonymous writer of the volume, of whom I know nothing, but simply of an ingenious, well-written book, unfortunate in its facts and not always very happy in its reasonings. Further, I do not think that palæontological fact, in its bearing on the points at issue, is of such a doubtful complexion as to leave the geologist, however much from moral considerations in earnest in the matter, any very serious excuse for losing his temper.
In my reference to the three great divisions of the geologic scale, I designate asPalæozoicall the fossiliferous rocks, from the first appearance of organic existence down to the close of the Permian system; all asSecondary, from the close of the Permian system down to the close of the Cretaceous deposits; and all asTertiary, from the close of the Cretaceous deposits down to the introduction of man. The wood-cuts of the volume, of which at least nine tenths of the whole represent objects never figured before, were drawn and cut by Mr. John Adams of Edinburgh, (8, Heriot Place,) with a degree of care and skill which has left me no reason to regret my distancefrom the London artists and engravers. So far at least as the objects could be adequately represented on wood, and in the limited space at Mr. Adams’ command, their truth is such that I can safely recommend them to the palæontologist. In the accompanying descriptions, and in my statements of geologic fact in general, it will, I hope, be seen that I have not exaggerated the peculiar features on which I have founded, nor rendered truth partial in order to make it serve a purpose. Where I have reasoned and inferred, the reader will of course be able to judge for himself whether the argument be sound or the deduction just; and to weigh, where I have merely speculated, the probability of the speculation; but as, in at leastsomeof my statements of fact, he might lie more at my mercy, I have striven in every instance to make these adequately representative of the actualities to which they refer. And so, if it be ultimately found that on some occasions I have misled others, it will, I hope, be also seen to be only in cases in which I have been mistaken myself. The first or popular title of my work, “Foot-prints of the Creator,” I owe to Dr. Hetherington, the well-known historian of the Church of Scotland. My other variousobligations to my friends, literary and scientific, the reader will find acknowledged in the body of the volume, as the occasion occurs of availing myself of either the information communicated, or the organism, recent or extinct, lent me or given.