We have still the broken Materials of that first World, and walk upon its Ruines; while it stood, there was the
Seat of Paradise, and the Scenes of the Golden Age; when it fell, it made the Deluge; And this unshapen Earth
we now inhabit, is the Form it was found in when the Waters had retir’d, and the dry Land appear’d. These
things, Sir, I propose and presume to prove in the following Treatise, which I willingly submit to Your
Majesty's judgment and Censure; being very well satisfied, that if I had sought a Patron in all the List of
Kings, Your Contemporaries: Or in the Roll of Your Nobles, of either Order: I could not have found a more
competent judge in a Speculation of this Nature. Your Majesty's Sagacity, and happy Genius for Natural
History, for Observations and Remarks upon the Earth, the Heavens, and the Sea, is a better preparation for
Inquiries of this kind, than all the dead Learning of the Schools.