Vlll PREFACE. 



treatise exceed a thousand in number, and were executed with 

 taste and accuracy by the author's accomplished daughters, Ann 

 and Susan. Two editions of this work, the one by the Reve- 

 rend William Huddesford, and the other more recently by 

 Mr Dillwyn, are those now generally referred to. 



Among the Annulose animals, the Spiders had early attract- 

 ed the notice of Lister, and his descriptions of the species, as 

 published in the first part of his Historia Animalium Anglice, 

 are still unrivalled. The study of Entomology had been faci- 

 litated, to a certain extent, by the appearance of the Theatrum 

 Insectorum of Moufet, London 1634; but it is to the Histo- 

 ria Insectorum of Ray, London 1710, to which Lister fur- 

 nished a valuable contribution, that the science was chiefly in- 

 debted for its early success, and the popularity which it still 

 maintains among the naturalists of England. 



The true nature of the Zoophytes was but imperfectly com- 

 prehended by zoologists throughout the period in which the 

 eminent individuals, now enumerated, continued to flourish. 

 At length, however, this interesting group of animals received 

 ample illustration from the meritorious labours of John Ellis, 

 whose Essay towards a Natural History of the Corallines, Lon- 

 don 1755, may be regarded as the last of the productions of the 

 old school of British Physiologists. 



It is painful to advert to the second era of British Zoology, 

 during which the Artificial Method of Linn^us occupied 

 that place which physiology had so successfully filled. We 

 must be careful, however, to make a distinction between the 

 precepts and example of Linnaeus himself, and the conduct of 

 his blind admirers. Linnaeus regarded the Natural Method, 

 which contemplates form, structure, and function, as the ulti- 

 mate object of the science of Zoology. His Artificial System, 

 in which external appearances were exclusively employed, was 

 devised as a convenient instrument of research to guide the stu- 

 dent in attaining higher objects. Too many of the followers 

 of the illustrious Swede, in this country, seem to have viewed 

 the Artificial Method, not as the instrument, but the object 

 aimed at, — overlooked results in physiology which industry had 

 already secured, and presented the science under an aspect 

 which a cultivated mind could not relish, and in which an or- 



