PREFACE. 31 



tematic arrangement, he seems so much disgusted 

 by their trifling but ostentatious efforts, that he 

 describes his animals almost in the order they 

 happen to come before him. This want of me- 

 thod seems to be a fault ; but he can lose little 

 by a criticism which every dull man can make, 

 or by an error in arrangement, from which the 

 dullest are the most usually free. 



In other respects, as far as this able philoso- 

 pher has gone, I have taken him for my guide. 

 The warmth of his style, and the brilliancy of his 

 imagination, are inimitable. Leaving him, there- 

 fore, without a rival in these, and only availing 

 myself of his information, I have been content 

 to describe things in my own way ; and though 

 many of the materials are taken from him, yet I 

 have added, retrenched, and altered, as I thought 

 proper. It was my intention, at one time, when- 

 ever I differed from him, to have mentioned it at 

 the bottom of the page ; but this occurred so 

 often, that I soon found it would look like envy, 

 and might, perhaps, convict me of those very 

 errors which I was wanting to lay upon him. I 

 have, therefore, as being every way his debtor, 

 concealed my dissent, where my opinion was 

 different; but wherever I borrow from him, I 

 take care at the bottom of the page to express 

 my obligations. But though my obligations to 

 this writer are many, they extend but to the 

 smallest part of the work, as he has hitherto com- 

 pleted only the history of quadrupeds. I was, 

 therefore, left to my own reading alone, to make 

 out the history of birds, fishes, and insects, of 



