It was to be in four volumes, uniform in red leather, with proper title, frontispiece, and "copper-plates," "printed and composed by a little boy, and also drawn." It was begun in 1826, and continued at intervals until 1829.

It was all done laboriously in imitation of print, and, to complete the illusion, contained a page of errata.

This great work was, of course, never completed, though he laboured through three volumes; but when he tired of it, he would turn his book upside down, and begin at the other end with other matters; so that the red books contain all sorts of notes on his minerals and travels, reports of sermons, and miscellaneous information, besides their professed contents; in this respect also being very like his later works.
There you have our author ready made, with his ever-fresh interest in everything, and all-attempting eagerness, out of which the first thing that crystallizes into any definite shape is the verse-writing..