The object of “The World before the Deluge” is to trace the progressive steps by which the earth has reached its present state, from that condition of chaos when it “was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep,” and to describe the various convulsions and transformations through which it has successively passed. In the words of the poet—

It has been thought desirable that the present edition of the work should undergo a thorough revision by a practical geologist, a task which Mr. H. W. Bristow has performed. Mr. Bristow has however confined himself to such alterations as were necessary to secure accuracy in the statement of facts, and such additions as were necessary to represent more precisely the existing state of scientific opinion. Many points which are more or less inferential and therefore matters of individual opinion, and especially those on which M. Figuier bases his speculations, have been left in their original form, in preference to making modifications which would wholly change the character of the book. In a work whose purpose is to give the general reader a summarised account of the results at which science has arrived, and of the method of reasoning regarding the facts on which these generalisations rest, it would be out of place, as well as ineffective, to obscure general statements with those limitations which caution imposes on the scientific investigator.

In the original work the Author had naturally enough drawn most of his facts from French localities; in the translation these are mostly preserved, but others drawn from British Geology have been added, either from the translator’s own knowledge, or from the works of well-known British writers. It was considered desirable, for similar reasons, to enlarge upon the opinions of British geologists, to whom the French work scarcely does justice, considering the extent to which the science is indebted to them for its elucidation.

In the original work the chapter on Eruptive Rocks comes at the end of the work, but, as the work proceeded, so many unexplained allusions to that chapter were found that it seemed more logical, and more in accordance with chronological order, if the expression may be used, to place that chapter at the beginning.

A new edition of the French work having appeared in the early part of 1866, to which the Author contributed a chapter on Metamorphic Rocks, a translation of it is appended to the chapter on Eruptive Rocks.

A chapter on the Rhætic (or Penarth) beds has been inserted (amongst much other original matter), the stratigraphical importance of that series having been recognised since the publication of the First Edition.

In the present Edition the text has been again thoroughly revised by Mr. Bristow, and many important additions made, the result of the recent investigations of himself and his colleagues of the Geological Survey.