PUBLISHER'S PREFACE. 



THE series of POPULAR INFORMATION volumes so happily introduced to the 

 great public under the general title of THE REASON WHY, has met, through- 

 out, with such a flattering reception, that the present valuable addition to 

 it, might well present itself sans all preliminaries. Relieved, therefore, 

 from the propitiatory embarrassments common to most prefaces, we feel 

 at liberty to point out that " THE REASON WHY NATURAL HISTORY " differs 

 materially from all other works on the same subject, and will be found to 

 depart very agreeably, in its main characteristics, from that ideal of it 

 which the mind of the reader would naturally set up in advance. In other 

 words, it is not a dry, formal disquisition, on animated nature, (like many 

 useful things, very excellent and very insipid,) but a chatty, sociable, 

 entertaining combination of scientific facts, with illustrative anecdotes, 

 clothed in language that the ordinary reader will readily understand, and 

 made piquant to the rudest taste, by a copious commentary in the shape of 

 pictorial accompaniments. 



It will have been observed that THE REASON WHY, in all its phases of 

 instruction, (In " THE BIBLICAL REASON WHY," for instance, in " INQUIRE 

 WITHIN," in " THAT'S IT, or PLAIN TEACHING," and so on,) has made it a 

 special endeavor to so combine mental amusement with mental education, 

 that the most indifferent to the acquisition ol knowledge might be tempted 

 into the pathways of learning, and discover themselves eagerly gathering 

 the flowers of wisdom while fancying that they culled for pastime, a few 

 blossoming weeds of quaint attractiveness. That endeavor has resulted in 

 a success exceeding all anticipation, and has bestowed on THE REASON 

 WHY a popularity surpassing its author's most extravagant estimate. This 

 NATURAL HISTORY sequence has been prepared with a careful eye to the 

 same acceptable peculiarity. It is free from everything calculated to 

 shock the most delicate sensibility. It contains not a line to which the rigid 

 purist can take exception. It sedulously avoids all sectarian, as well as all 

 sectional differences of opinion. It treats the harmonies of nature in their 

 manifold varieties of form and animation, with an amiable conservatism 

 admirably in unison with the subject ; and it accomplishes its purpose with 

 an engaging seductiveness that is irresistibly effective. 



