PREFACE. 



In the present Volume I have endeavored to present to the reader the outlines of zoologic 

 knowledge in a form that shall be readily comprehended. In accordance with this principle, the 

 technical language of scientific Zoology has been carefully avoided, and English names have been 

 employed wherever practicable in the place of Greek or Latin appellatives. 



Owing to the inordinate use of pseudo-classical phraseology, the fascinating study of animal 

 life has been too long considered as a profession or a science restricted to a favored few. So 

 deeply rooted is this idea, that the popular notion of a scientific man is of one who possesses a fund 

 of words, and not of one who has gathered a mass of ideas. There is really not the least reason why 

 anyone of ordinary capabilities and moderate memory should not be acquainted with the general 

 outlines of Zoology, when relieved of the cumbersome diction with which it is embarrassed. 



The true object of Zaology is not, as some appear to fancy, to arrange, to number and to 

 ticket animals in a formal inventory, but to make the study an inquiry into the Life-nature, and 

 not only an investigation of the lifeless organism. I must not, however, be understood to disparage 

 the outward form, thing of clay though it be. For what wondrous clay it is, and how marvellous the 

 continuous miracle by which the dust of earth is transmuted into the glowing colors and graceful 

 forms which we most imperfectly endeavor to preserve after the soul has departed therefrom. It 

 is a great thing to be acquainted with the material framework of any creature, but it is a far greater 

 to know something of the principle which gave animation to that structure. The former, indeed, is 

 the consequence of the latter. The lion, for example, does not prey on animals because it possesses 

 fangs, talons, strength and activity; on the contrary, it possesses these qualities because its inmost 

 nature is to prey, and it needs these appliances to enable it to carry out the innate principle of its 

 being; so that the truest description of the lion is that which treats of the animating spirit, and not 

 only of the outward form. In accordance with this principle, it has been my endeavor to make the 

 work rather anecdotal and vital than merely anatomical and scientific. 



What do we know of Man from the dissecting room? Of Man, the warrior, the statesman, 

 the poet or the saint? In the lifeless corpse there are no records of the burning thoughts, the 

 hopes, loves and fears that once animated that now passive form, and which constituted the very 

 essence of the being. Every nerve, fibre and particle in the dead bodies of the king and the beggar, 

 the poet and the boor, the saint and the sensualist, may be separately traced, and anatomically they 

 shall all be alike, for neither of the individuals is there, and on the dissecting table lies only the 

 cast-off attire that the spirit no longer needs. The zoologist will never comprehend the nature of 

 any creature by the most careful investigation of its interior structure or the closest inspection of its 

 stuffed skin, for the material structure tells little of the vital nature, and the stuffed skin is but the 

 lay figure stiffly fitted with its own cast coat. 



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