XIV INTRODUCTION. 



frequent or more opportune looking after the several 

 kinds. 



Those who from their youngest days have been lovers 

 of "Nature," and who have in advancing years even 

 those of earlier date been led against their natural 

 wishes to think of the future of the field before them, 

 have, to judge from myself and my own thoughts and 

 feelings in the like case been constrained to deplore the 

 onward march of cultivation, and to fear for its results 

 when still more advanced on the creatures "feree na- 

 turse" around them; to sigh for the return of the days 

 that are gone, those which they themselves have known, 

 and to sigh still more deeply for those of a yet further 

 bygone age, of which they have heard with listening 

 ears, and have read with admiring and longing eyes. 

 But everyone of a right turn of mind will take more than 

 one view of things, and the Naturalist will console himself, 

 at all events to a certain extent, by calling to mind 

 the many advantages to those around him and himself 

 which higher cultivation and higher civilization for the 

 land is the very source and origin, in some way or other, 

 direct or indirect, of all bodily advantages naturally 

 and unfailing secure. And, further than this, whether 

 it be that necessity, which is the mother of invention 

 to men, asserts the same successful dominion over the 

 other creatures, and, bending even instinct to her sway, 

 accommodates them to the altered circumstances of the 

 times, or whatever the cause, he still rejoices, and 

 has reason to rejoice, in the double result, the progressive 

 advance of the age, and the preservation through all 

 vicissitudes of so many creatures of the hand of the 

 Immortal, which the same hand by His providence has 

 preserved through a "thousand generations," which 

 though to Him "but as yesterday," are coeval in our 



