PREFACE. V 



the wall : he spake also of beasts, and of fowls, and 

 of creeping things, and of fishes." Aristotle also 

 wrote largely on these subjects : the most magnifi- 

 cent and powerful of the kings of Israel, and the 

 prince of the Grecian philosophers, made the 

 knowledge of Nature one of the principal objects 

 of their pursuit. 



The best mode of communicating useful instruc- 

 tion, is to render it entertaining; arid youth seldom 

 find any thing agreeable that appears in the form of 

 a task. Systematic arrangements, however advan- 

 tageous they may be to the professed naturalist, 

 tend more frequently to embarrass than to inform 

 the juvenile student, or the common reader. Vari- 

 ous systems have been formed by naturalists, each 

 of which has had its adherents ; while by others, 

 it has been exploded as too close or too restrictive, 

 too simple or too complex. The cause of this de- 

 fect, and the difficulty of forming complete system- 

 atic arrangements, is, that Nature has not attached 

 so much importance to these distinctions as they 

 have done, nor made them the uniform rules of her 

 operations. Buffon, the great philosophical painter 

 of Nature, conscious of the brilliant energies of 

 his own expansive mind, affects to soar above whjxt 

 he calls the trammels of system, and despises all 

 artificial arrangements, saying, that " all our fami- 

 lies and generations are made by ourselves, and 

 not by Nature, which knows nothing of these dis- 

 tinctions." The system of Linnaeus, which is con- 

 sidered by naturalists as the most perfect of all 

 those that have been invented, is a monument of 

 the ingenuity and industry of that great man ; but 



