XIV PREFACE. 



that has emanated from the University of which I am a 

 member, I cannot but look upon it as indicating the not 

 distant dawn of an era, destined, I trust, to produceinvesti- 

 gations, the importance of which will tend to give our city 

 a rank, certainly not yet acquired, among those distin- 

 guished for the cultivation of Natural History, the most 

 delightful of all sciences, the source of all knowledge, 

 the study best adapted to refine our affections, and to 

 bring us continually into the presence of our Creator, 

 the maker and preserver of us, and all those wonderful 

 objects that everywhere present themselves to our view. 

 The time is almost gone when a little Latin, a little 

 Greek, a little Mathematics, a little Natural Philosophy, 

 and a little Moral Philosophy, in such spare quantities 

 as "one small head could hold," made an accomplished 

 scholar. The book of Nature has been opened to us, 

 and whatever profit there may be in storing our minds 

 with phrases, it would require some ingenuity to shew 

 that the knowledge of things is not more useful than 

 that of words. Some defend the system of wasting five 

 or six years of a man's life in learning so much Latin as 

 may barely suffice to enable him to read a page of a 

 classical author without the aid of a Dictionary, on the 

 ground of its being an exercise calculated to fix the at- 

 tention, and to exercise the memory ; but a more useful 

 and far nobler study is that of Nature, which calls into 

 action every faculty of the mind, engages the best affec- 

 tions, and has reference to the perfect works of a perfect 

 Creator. " Ask now the beasts, and they shall teach 

 thee ; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee ; 

 or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee ; and the 

 fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth 

 not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought 

 this?" Let Latin and Greek have their due share of 

 attention, but let not the incubus of classic lore be per- 

 mitted to smother the mind, that, if unrestrained, would 

 inhale with delight the pure air of heaven. 



Chanonry, Old Aberdeen, 

 Oth March, 1843. 



