gift Tappen Prest, bes 4-19-1932 ΤΟ DAVIES GILBERT, ESQ. D. C. L. (BY DIPLOMA,) 7. R. S., HON. M. R. S. E., HON. M. R. I. A., MY DEAR SIR, I ONLY fulfil a gratifying duty in dedicating to you the present Essay, which owes its existence principally to your favourable opinion of my ability to discharge the trust confided to me. To have been thus selected for such a service, is a distinction which I prize as one of the most honourable results of my devotion of many years to the study of the mineral structure of the Earth. I fear, however, that your estimate of my qualifications has been raised above my deserts, by your affectionate regard for the University, with which it has been our common happiness to be so long connected. Whatever other results may have attended my public exertions in this place, I assure you that it is a source of much satisfaction to me to find them thus rewarded by the approbation of a Philosopher, whose attainments placed him in the chair once occupied by Newton, and who is endeared by his urbanity to all, who have ever enjoyed the happiness of communication with him, either as the President of the Royal Society of London, or in that more familiar intercourse of private friendship to which it has been my privilege to be admitted. Believe me to remain, My dear Sir, Your much obliged and faithful Servant, Christ Church, Oxford, WILLIAM BUCKLAND. May 30, 1836. PREFACE. THREE important subjects of inquiry in Natural Theology come under consideration in the present Treatise. The first regards the inorganic Elements of the Mineral Kingdom, and the actual dispositions of the Materials of the Earth many of these, although produced or modified by the agency of violent and disturbing forces, afford abundant proofs of wise and provident Intention, in their adaptations to the uses of the Vegetable and Animal Kingdoms, and especially to the condition of Man. The second relates to the Theories which have been entertained respecting the Origin of the World; and the derivation of existing systems of organic Life, by an eternal succession, from preceding individuals of the same species; or by gradual transmutation of one species into another. I have endeavoured to show, that to all these Theories the phenomena of Geology are decidedly opposed. The third extends into the Organic Remains of a former World the same kind of investigation, which Paley has pursued with so much success in his examination of the evidences of Design in the mechanical structure of the corporeal frame, of Man, and of the inferior Animals which are placed with him on the present surface of the Earth. The myriads of petrified Remains which are disclosed by the researches of Geology all tend to prove, that our Planet has been occupied in times preceding the Creation of the Human Race, by extinct species of Animals and Vegetables, made up, like living Organic Bodies, of "Clusters of Contrivances," which demonstrate the exercise of stupendous Intelligence and Power. They farther show that these extinct forms of Organic Life were so closely allied, by Unity in the principles of their construction, to Classes, Orders, and Families, which make up the existing Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms, that they not only afford an argument of surpassing force, against the doctrines of the Atheist and Polytheist; but supply a chain of connected evidence, amounting to demonstration, of the continuous Being, and of many of the highest Attributes of the One Living and True God. |