1 8 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. 



plants and insects knows not half the halo of interest which 

 lanes and hedgerows can assume. Whoever has not sought 

 for fossils has little idea of the poetical associations that 

 surround the places where embedded treasures were found. 

 Whoever at the sea-side has not had a microscope and 

 aquarium have yet to learn what the highest pleasures of 

 the sea-side are." 



HERBERT SPENCER. 



WERE I to choose a supplementary title, I should call 

 this work a Zoological Gleaner, wherein the Nineteenth 

 Century culture the literary culture which, according to 

 Matthew Arnold, acquaints itself with "the best that is 

 thought and known in the world' 1 and the scientific 

 culture which, according to Mr. Huxley, is simply " common 

 sense at its best" receives the full measure of the poetic 

 interest which lies in common things. 



Apart from the love for my subject which has impelled, 

 upheld, and encouraged me to proceed in my self imposed 

 task ; apart from the aim to clothe it in " the best that is 

 thought and known in the world " relative thereto, I have 

 ever had in view the aspiring ambition to make this work 

 readable by all, and at the same time useful to my brother 

 naturalists. Nor have I neglected the advice of Horace : 



" Omne tulit punctum, qui miscuit utile dulci 

 Lectorem delectando pariterque monendo." 



In allusion to which says the late distinguished naturalist, 

 John Gwyn Jeffreys : (a} 



(a) "British Conchology," Introduction, vol. ii. 



