Vltr PREFAl E. 



gathered here and there, bear with rue if in my little effort 

 to follow, longo intervallo, the style of such a naturalist as 

 Waterton, I timidly shelter myself under another quota- 

 tion from his Essays on Natural History ; it will serve to 

 explain my reasons for taking him for my model. : ' I 

 " verily believe that if an unfortunate criminal just now 

 " were defended by a sergeant-at-law, without his 

 " professional wig and gown, and then condemmed to 

 " death by my lord judge in plain clothes, the people 

 " would exclaim 'that poor devil has not had a fair trial.' 

 '■' So it is with natural history. Divest a book on birds, 

 " for example, of its unintelligible nomenclature, together 

 " with its perplexing display of new divisions, and then it 

 " will soon be declared deficient in the main points, mid 

 " be condemned to slumber on the dusty shelf. If in this 

 " little treatise on monkeys I shall succeed in imparting a 

 '' love for natural history into the minds of my young 

 " readers, and at the same time convince them how much 

 " is gained in the field, and how little in the closet, my 

 " time and labour will he well repaid. I will introduce 

 " no harsh words to confound them, nor recommend to 

 " them systems, which at best, are unsatisfactory inven- 

 " tions. All that I have got to sa} r shall lie placed before 

 " them in so clear a point of view, that every reader, be 

 " his education light or solid, will be able to comprehend 

 " my meaning, and nothing more than this can be 

 " required." Like my model, my aim in this respect is to 

 impart a love of natural history to fishermen, and to gain 

 amongst them more friends and coadjutors for pisciculture 

 in India. In my Official Reports to Government also, all 

 the members of which are not necessarilv pisciculturists, I 

 have ever studiously excluded all hard words from the 

 text, and have pushed them unceremoniously into the 

 margin ; so also in this little book any phraseology of 

 science will he found condemned to a foot-note, or to the 



