8 Introductory Remarks. 



It will be useless to enumerate the branches of Natural 

 History, in which we need information ; for to each of the 

 catalogue we should have only to attach a lamentation over 

 our deficiency; and the case will remain much as it is, 

 until those who can observe are more widely spread, and 

 can communicate regularly the information they acquire. 

 Much there may be now half hidden among us, which we 

 hope, the individuals possessing it will not grudge to confer 

 on us. 



The object of the Institution then, is, to induce men to 

 think of such things, — to assist in the investigations of other 

 men, and to communicate their success or failure, and the 

 methods which led to either. From this may be correctly 

 understood, the nature of the communications which the 

 Journal professes to offer. It may perhaps bear little 

 of the aspect or lofty character of a Journal of Science 

 properly so called. It is to be expected, perhaps even 

 hoped, that we shall not have much of the technical 

 language of any science, without such elucidation as will 

 render it generally understood. Endeavours will be used 

 to give the miscellaneous department, or extracted matter, 

 as much as possible of the same character of being generally 

 profitable. 



No other advantage than those described is expected 

 from the sale or circulation of the Journal. If we be suc- 

 cessful in being supported, we hope to be successful in be- 

 ing useful — that will be our profit. Asa community, we 

 possess a position almost unrivalled for facilities in securing 

 information or extending it. Placed on the highway of 

 common communication, betwixt the world's nations, 

 whether aged in wisdom or in ignorance, or yet little more 

 than the half-formed germ of prospective empires, we can 

 never feel the lack of information from others : — canopied 

 by a sky of strange and unsearched splendour; and 

 nourished by a land of unrivalled interest ; with fantastic 

 mountains immersing their foundations in the seas, and 

 their summits in the vapours of a hemisphere almost 

 unknown, it will be long indeed before the means of in- 

 vestigation correspond to the variety and importance of the 

 objects submitted to them : and ere we attain the great end 

 of conceiving adequately the wisdom of their Author, many 

 and lofty indeed must be the stages of information we ascend. 



months ago, at a very trifling expence, had there been any Institution to receive 

 it. It ultimately found its way to Paris, where it seems to have been welcomed 

 with great satisfaction. It is and ought to stand as the Rhineodon Typus ot 

 Dr. Smith, — See Zoological Journal, vol. page 



