OF POPULAR GEOLOGY BY HUGH MILLER, FIFTH EDITION. EDINBURGH: WILLIAM P. NIMM O. 1872. HARVARD EDINBURGH: T. CONSTABLE, PRINTER TO THE QUEEN, AND TO THE UNIVERSITY. TO THE REV. W. S. SYMONDS, RECTOR OF PENDOCK, HEREFORDSHIRE. DEAR SIR, Am I presuming too much on my position, as merely the editor of the following Lectures, when I ask leave to dedicate them to you? It is unquestionably a liberty with the production of another which only very peculiar circumstances can at all excuse. Yet, in the present case, I venture to think that those peculiar circumstances do exist; and I feel assured he would readily pardon me, whose work this is, and whose memory you so much revere. Without your cooperation, I believe that neither the Cruise of the Betsey nor these pages could by this time have seen the light. When my own over-laden brain refused to do its duty, you gave me to hope, by offers of welltimed assistance, that the task before me might still be accomplished. Your friendly voice, often heard in tones of sympathizing inquiry when I was unable to endure your own or any other human presence,—even that of my dear child,-was for a time the only sound that brought to my heart any promise or cheer for the future. It was then, while unable to read the very characters in which they were written, that I put into your hands the papers containing The Cruise and Ten Thousand Miles over the Fossiliferous Deposits of Scotland. You undertook the editorial duties connected with them con amore, and performed your task in a manner that left nothing to be desired. During the preparation of the present volume for the press, you have given me all the advantage of your ready stores of information, both in carefully scrutinizing the text to see where any addition was required in the form of notes, and in referring me to the best authorities on every b |