PREFACE. IX 



sketches of scenery which are as true to nature as an imskilled 

 pen could draw them ; and I have availed myself of more than 

 one opportunity to develop the workings of our Naturalists' 

 Club, in the success of which I could not fail to feel an interest. 

 Were it not for the contributions I have received from the 

 Members of that Club, my work could never have attained the 

 perfectness which, as a catalogue, it possesses. And to its 

 present zealous President, I am indebted for the interesting- 

 chapter on our Fossil Botany. 



Should the reader find in such a volume nothing to refresh 

 and nourish him, — meat fit only for babes and too tenuous for 

 manhood, — I pray him not therefore to conclude that the 

 subject is a profitless one. That cannot be. It doth not 

 necessarily follow that there is no water in the well when the 

 bucket is drawn up empty : there may be incapacity in tlie 

 vessel, or awkwardness and want of skill in the drawer. And it 

 may well be that the author has not read the leaves of the Book 

 of Nature, which he has opened, aright, nor given them that 

 interpretation and significance which a more thoughtful and 

 minded head would have done. It is very true that I have 

 been a scholar for many years in this book ; and I have taught 

 myself to take note of, and pleasure in, those works with which 

 the Creator has crowded and adorned the paths I daily walk; 

 and sure I am that now I can see and appreciate a beauty and 

 excellence, where, otherwise, they would not have impressed me ; 

 — yet incapableness, or inaptitude in clothing one's own feelings 

 and thoughts in fit and well-set words, may have hindered me 

 perceiving what were the fittest and most apt, or losing them in 

 defective and inefficient utterance. Let my weakness nor injure 

 the svibject, nor hinder the worthiest to examine for themselves. 

 Niebuhr reckoned it among the most imjjortant results of his 

 travels, that the indifference with which he was in the habit of 

 regarding the objects of nature around him had given way ; and 

 aTiy who will educate themselves to observe, will feel that Niebuhr 

 made no error in the reckoning. The senses are not given to 

 man with the limited powers they have in brutes. These have 

 eyes, but they, in one sense, see not : whereas in us, the eye is, 

 besides the visual organ, a sentinel and servant to watch, and go 



