POPULAR GEOLOGY: A SERIES OF LECTURES READ BEFORE THE PHILOSOPHICAL WITH Descriptive Sketches from a Geologist's Portfolio. BY HUGH MILLER. WITH AN INTRODUCTORY RÉSUMÉ OF THE PROGRESS OF GEOLOGICAL SCIENCE WITHIN THE LAST TWO YEARS, BY MRS. MILLER. BOSTON: GOULD AND LINCOLN, 59 WASHINGTON STREET, NEW YORK: SHELDON AND COMPANY. CINCINNATI: GEORGE 8. BLANCHARD. HARVARD COLLEGE 43*30 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by GOULD AND LINCOLN, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. ELECTROTYPED BY W. F. DRAPER, ANDOVER, MASS. PRINTED BY GEO. C. RAND & AVERY, BOSTON. PREFACE то THE AMERICAN EDITION. THIS new volume, from the pen of HUGH MILLER, is a legacy wholly unlooked for by the American public. It was known to many of his admirers on this side of the Atlantic that he had been laboring for years on a work designed to be the magnum opus of his life -"THE GEOLOGY OF SCOTLAND." But his untimely death, it was supposed, had cut short his labors, and left the work in a state so fragmentary that his literary executors would not venture to publish it. The impression was a correct one, as related to the design of the author, in its magnitude and completeness. But the present volume supplies, to general readers, what the proposed work would have done for the scientific world. It gives the geological history of Scotland - and, with Scotland, of the world in language intelligible to all, and with an affluence of anecdote, and incident, and literary allusion, in which HUGH MILLER was without an equal among the scientific writers of our century. It gives precisely what a multitude of readers in this country have been longing to find a rational account of the manner in which all the strata of the earth's crust have been formed, from the foundation of unstratified granite and gneiss to the alluvial deposits of its surface. Scotland is literally taken to pieces, like a house of many stories; and one looks on the processes of the Divine Architect, as he would on the work of a human builder. The hypotheses (for they can be regarded only as such) are original, and curious, and plausible. Some readers may doubt their accuracy, but none will question the eminent ability with which they are developed. The volume will add to the reputation of the author, and the popularity of his writings; and will aid many, who have a slight acquaintance with geological science, to form habits of practical observation in their country rambles. The American Publishers have given the title of "Descriptive Sketches" to sundry papers which Mrs. Miller has selected from unpublished manuscripts of her husband, and to which, with characteristic modesty, she gave the simple name of "Appendix." They regarded these papers as an important part of the volume, and demanding, from their intrinsic merits, a distinctive title. BOSTON, APRIL, 1859. |