This article is an introduction to the science of geology for the general public that appeared in the Gazette & Herald newspaper in Greenfield, Massachusetts, on April 3, 1835. The writer cites the work of the German geologist Johann Gottlob Lehmann (1719-1767), whose work influenced Abraham Gottlob Werner. Werner's geological theories were hotly argued in Edinburgh, Scotland, during the period when Benjamin Silliman was studying there. The article is unsigned, but Silliman or Edward Hitchcock could have been its author. It appeared mere weeks after the day the laborer Dexter Marsh came across birdlike footprints in a sidewalk slab in Greenfield.