PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 



THE preceding preface exhibits a faithful account of the state in which I 

 found the history of animals at the time the first edition of this work 

 was published. During the twelve years that have since elapsed, this 

 science has made immense progress both in the harvests which have been 

 reaped by numerous travellers, as accomplished as they were intrepid, 

 who have explored every region of the globe, either by means of the rich 

 museums formed under the auspices of various governments, or by those 

 learned and beautiful works in which new species are represented and 

 described, and in which we feel prompted to catch their mutual relations, 

 and to contemplate them under every point of view*. 



I have endeavoured to avail myself of these discoveries, as far as my 

 plan permitted, by first studying the innumerable specimens received at 

 the King's Cabinet, and comparing them with those which served as the 

 basis of my first edition, in order to deduce thence new approximations or 

 new subdivisions, and then by searching in all the books I could procure 

 for the genera or subgenera established by naturalists, and the descrip- 

 tion of species by which they have supported these different combina- 

 tions. 



This study of synonymes has become much easier now than it was at 

 the period of my first edition. Both French and foreign naturalists seem 

 to have felt the necessity of establishing divisions in those immense 

 genera, in which such incongruous species were formerly heaped toge- 

 ther; their groups are now precise and well defined, their descriptions 

 sufficiently detailed, their figures scrupulously exact even to the most 

 minute characters, and very frequently of the greatest beauty as specimens 

 of art. There now remains scarcely any difficulty in fixing the identity 

 of their species, they had only to establish an understanding about the 

 nomenclature. Unfortunately that object of care was the one which 

 they most neglected; the names of the same genera and of the same spe- 

 cies are multiplied as often as an author speaks of them, and, in conse- 

 quence of this disagreement, the same chaos will spring up in all its 

 former confusion, though arising altogether from a different cause. 



* See my Discourse before the Institute on the " Progr^s de I'Histoire Naturelle 

 depuis la Paix maritime," published at the commencement of the third volume of 

 my " Eloges." 



