Ixvi. TO THE READER. 



of the third, marking, however, as they skim the pages, the 

 conclusions at which I arrive regarding the bulk and orga- 

 nization of the extraordinary animal described, and the data 

 on which these are founded. My book, like an Irish land- 

 scape dotted with green bogs, has its portions on which it 

 may be perilous for the unpractised surveyor to make any 

 considerable stand, but across which he may safely take his 

 sights and lay down his angles. 



It will, I trust, be found, that in dealing with errors 

 which, in at least their primary bearing, affect questions of 

 science, I have not offended against the courtesies of scien- 

 tific controversy. True, they are errors which also involve 

 moral consequences. There is a species of superstition 

 which inclines men to take on trust whatever assumes the 

 name of science, and which seems to be a re-action on the 

 old superstition, that had faith in witches, but none in Sir 

 Isaac Newton, and believed in ghost«, but failed to credit 

 the Gregorian calendar. And, owing mainly to the wide 

 diffusion of this credulous spirit of the modern type, as little 

 disposed to examine what it receives as its ancient unreason- 

 ing predecessor, the development doctrines are doing much 

 harm on both sides of the Atlantic, especially among intelli- 

 gent mechanics, and a class of young men engaged in the 

 subordinate departments of trade and the law. And the 

 Siarm thi>s considerable in amount must be necessarily more 

 than merely considerable in degree. For it invariably hap- 

 pens, that when persons in these walks become materialists, 

 they become also turbulent subjects and bad men. That 

 belief in the existence after death, which forms the distin- 

 ^ishing instinct of humanity, is too essential a paii; of manV 



