VI PREFACE. 
such an undertaking, and one which, if less consistent with its beauty 
as a work of art, might yet, it was observed, bestow an additional 
degree of fidelity and precision on its anatomical details. 
I did follow this advice, and it is to the kind exertions of the same 
friends that I stand chiefly indebted for the highly respectable list of 
Subscribers who have sanctioned this work by their patronage. Great, 
however, as is the encouragement I have derived from this circum- 
stance, [ still feel how much I must require the indulgence of the 
Public, in venturing to appear before it as anauthor and an artist, and 
especially on a subject so imperfectly understood as the present. 
I trust, however, that I may fairly consider myself as having 
pointed out characters which throw a new and not unimportant light 
on the class of beings under consideration, which mark with precision 
the natural arrangements of their Genera and Species, and illustrate 
many of the most essential features of their organic structure; and 
since the elucidations hence resulting, offer in many and material 
instances new analogies, which may be usefully applied to the inves- 
tigation of the other families of that important and hitherto imperfecly 
understood natural division, the radiated Echinodermata, I am 
willing to flatter myself that my researches may be considered as 
adding a useful, though humble, contribution to the now rapidly 
increasing stock of accurate Zoological knowledge. 
Since the progress of these inquiries had brought to light numerous 
Species hitherto unknown or incorrectly ascertained, it became 
necessary to adopt, in part at least, a new nomenclature; from this 
consideration, and not from any desire of capricious innovation, 
which must, whereyer it is superfluous, prove also detrimental to 
science, 1 have suffdfed myself to be swayed in this subject. 
In the nomenclature I have thus proposed, I have therefore 
retained the old and familiar deriyation of the classic name from the 
