VI REMARKS. 



ways excepted where the mistake was evidently and purely 

 typographical), hut by a note, either on the page itself, or in 

 the appendix. Thus, whatever has been added, nothing has 

 been taken away, and the text of my author remains as I 

 found it. 



It was originally my intention to have made considerable 

 additions of American species to the Entomology, but to such 

 an extent has the formation of new genera and the division of 

 old ones lately been carried, that it would have required 

 more time to do this correctly than to translate the whole 

 book, and consequently I was compelled to abandon it. Of 

 the Fishes of this country nothing can be said, until we are in 

 possession of the expected work of M. Lesueur. 



The period in which America was compelled to look to 

 Europe for a knowledge of her own productions has termi- 

 nated; and our Wilson, Say, Ord, Le Conte, Harlan, Hentz, 

 Audubon, &c. &c. are repaying the debt with usury. Nor 

 is this spirit of observation abating. The increasing number 

 of institutions exclusively devoted to the natural sciences, in 

 almost every section of our extensive country, shows the re- 

 verse to be the fact, and authorizes us to expect the most 

 splendid results from their united efforts. 



I cannot conclude without acknowledging my obligations to 

 Major Le Conte for his valuable communications on various 

 portions of the Regne Animal. The results of his critical and 

 laborious investigations are chiefly to be found in the notes on 

 American birds, and the Catalogue which closes this volume, 

 and I have only to regret that the unfinished state of the work 

 on the Lepidoptera of North America, which is now being 

 published at Paris by him and M. Boisduval, prevented me 

 from employing it. 



H. M^MURTRIE. 



Philadelphia y June 1831. 



