iv DEDICATORY EPISTLE. 



Few men save those who from religious motives have re- 

 nounced the world have lived so little in communication with 

 it as I have. I am not a member of any society or club, of 

 any church or institution, trade, profession, or organization. 

 Though once a student of Harvard College, I am not a gradu- 

 ate ; and though ha my early manhood for many years a con- 

 tributor to the political press, I have never been an editor nor 

 a politician. I have lived entirely without honors, and have 

 never rejected any. And if, possibly, I have on any occasion 

 manifested an appreciable amount of boldness or independence 

 in speaking my thoughts and avowing my opinions, any such 

 eccentricity may be attributed to this circumstance ; for every 

 honor a man receives from the community is a fetter upon his 

 freedom of speech and action. I have not been drawn into 

 society by a taste for its amusements or its vices ; I have not 

 joined the crowd either of its saints or its sinners ; I have pur- 

 sued my tasks alone, except as I have read and conversed with 

 my wife and children. She and they have been the only com- 

 panions of my studies and recreations during all the prime of 

 my life. But, perhaps from this cause alone, I have been very 

 happy. The study of nature and my domestic avocations 

 have yielded me a full harvest of pleasures, though it was 

 barren of honors. 



When you read this volume, you will discover, if you open 

 it as a work of technical exactness in its descriptions of 

 natural objects, that it has no such merit. Though I have 

 probably passed more time in the woods than any man who 

 is not a woodcutter by trade, I have not been a collector of 

 specimens, nor a dissector of birds and flowers, nor a measurer 

 of trees, nor a hammerer of rocks. I know the value of this 

 kind of research, but my observations are of a different char- 

 acter. I distinguish the objects of nature as I distinguish 

 my friends by physiognomical marks. My book differs from 

 learned works as Lavater's " Physiognomy " differs from Che- 

 selden's " Anatomy," or as a lover's description of his lady's 

 hand would differ from Bell's anatomical description of it. 

 I mention these things, not with any vulgar depreciation of 



