PREFACE. 



As it may fairly be claimed for my father that he was 

 the first to popularise natural history, and to render 

 it interesting, and even intelligible, to non- scientific 

 minds, it has been thought advisable that some 

 account of his life and labours should be prepared 

 and published while his memory is yet fresh in the 

 minds of those who have read his books or listened 

 to his lectures. In the following pages, therefore, I 

 have endeavoured to describe his three-fold work as 

 clergyman, author, and lecturer, and at the same time 

 to give a short account of his public and private life 

 from his early boyhood to the closing days of his 

 life. 



Unfortunately for the labours of a biographer, the 

 diaries which he left behind him and which are by 

 no means continuous are extremely scanty, and often 

 for many weeks together there is nothing but the 

 barest entry of work done and letters written, with- 

 out amplification or details of any kind. By the aid 



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