TO DAVID PENNANT, ESQ., 



OF DOWNING, FLINTSHIRE, 



GREAT-BRITAIN. 



Dear Sir, 



PERMIT me to inscribe the following pages to you, 

 as a small mark of my respect for your literary and private cha- 

 racter. 



I look back, with real satisfaction, upon the epistolary inter- 

 course which, for some years, subsisted between your late excel- 

 lent Father and myself. Indeed, I consider the commencement 

 of that intercourse as constituting one of the most pleasurable and 

 important (so far as any thing in my life is important) events of 

 my life. Your Father's letters to me, the flattering manner in 

 which he introduced me to the notice of the Public, were among 

 the most powerful and permanent incitements to my labours, in 

 the study of Natural History. I cannot, then, readily forget his 

 kindness and his friendship; for, in the study of Nature, I have 

 passed much the most happy period of my life ; and I flatter my- 

 self, that the most happy and most tranquil portion of my re- 

 maining days will be connected with the same delightful study, 

 which is, for ever, offering to its votaries something new and 

 useful, especially in this New World, which, to the great retard- 

 ment of the progress of the different branches of Natural History, 

 has, hitherto, been untrod by the footsteps of a Linnaeus or a 

 Pknnant. 



To me your Father entrusted the task of enlarging the stock 

 of American Zoology. I have to regret, that, hitherto, I have 



