56 THE EEV. J. G. WOOD. 



was concerned, and which might very possibly help to 

 instruct the public upon a branch of science of which 

 mankind in general then knew very little. 



For in those days the book of Nature was practically 

 a sealed volume to all but the few who were able and 

 willing to undergo a long apprenticeship before they 

 could become acquainted with its marvels and its 

 mysteries. It had been made a hard, dry science, 

 teeming with technicalities and incomprehensible 

 phraseology, and sesquipedalian and often unmeaning 

 nomenclature. Classification was regarded far more 

 highly than the study of habits and life-histories, and 

 animals were looked upon, in fact, rather as cleverly 

 constructed machines than as living beings made from 

 the same clay as man himself. And consequently 

 Natural History had come to be associated in the 

 popular mind with all that was uninteresting and 

 repellent, and the wonder-world of Nature, only need- 

 ing the easily applied key of Interest to open it, was as 

 yet almost wholly unknown. 



So my father set himself to write a small Natural 

 History for the general reader, in which technicalities 

 and scientific phraseology should be either set aside 

 altogether, or at least, when necessity compelled their 

 adoption, be carefully and simply explained. From 

 this principle, in fact, he never swerved throughout the 

 whole of his literary career. Thoroughly familiar him- 

 self with the rules of classification, and perfectly at 

 home in the tongue not " understanded of the people," 

 which was then almost invariably adopted by writers 



