PREFATORY NOTICE. 15 



3 tailor or the milliner ; and 

 'ainly not willingly do any 

 T atural History a matter of 



u wno observes nature is not to be supposed 

 to collect an audience every time that he looks 

 abroad upon the earth or upward to the sky, and 

 though he be ever so zealous a member of any of 

 the societies which have for their object the ad- 

 vancement of his favourite study, it is but rarely that 

 he can have any thing worth communicating even 

 there. So that a man's contemplation of nature is, 

 like his religion, a subject of personal pleasure to 

 himself; and, as is apt to be the case with religion, 

 if he makes too much parade of it before the world 

 he runs some danger of losing it Besides, although 

 there are few occupations more pleasant than rational 

 conversations on Natural History with friends, espe- 

 cially with young friends, when one can instruct them 

 without appearing to act the schoolmaster ; yet still 

 the sweetest hours of a man's converse with nature 

 are those during which he has it all to himself. It 

 is then that the career of thought runs free and far 

 as the light of heaven ; and vanity is subdued, and 

 bitterness is sweetened, and hope is elevated, by the 

 comparison of one's own little acquirements and 

 cares, with the mighty expanse around, and of the 

 perfect nothingness of this life in respect to that which 

 then rises clearly and convincingly in the anticipation. 

 That is the feeling of natural objects which I have 

 wished to excite and encourage : if that end could 

 be seen and kept in view, the observation of the 

 facts would be a very easy matter ; and, as every 



