George Poulett Scrope (1797-1876) was a pioneering British geologist whose interest in volcanos was inspired by trips to Vesuvius while he was an undergraduate. This influential book on the igneous rocks of the Massif Central was originally published in 1827 and revised for the 1858 edition reissued here.

The 1858 edition of a pioneering 1827 geological study of central France, by a British contemporary of Darwin and Lyell.