John Murray was a writer on science and lecturer in the first half of the nineteenth century. He appears to have developed an interest in science at an early age, publishing his first work on the subject in 1815. The following year, he took part in debates about miners’ safety lamps, publishing papers on their design and creating his own that he demonstrated at public lectures. Murray wrote on a variety of scientific subjects. In 1830, he published this book on natural history and as the decade went on, he became involved in debates over scriptural geology – an attempt to reconcile the Biblical Creation with geological evidence – writing several books on the subject.