PRELIMINARY NOTICES. 



For the Pleasures of Ornithology, as it was elaborated 

 with considerable care, and in which the scientific terms are 

 less sparingly infroduced than in Ornithologia , the author 

 must confess he had confidently anticipated, from the critics 

 at least, some encouragement j but, if the London Magazine 

 can be relied on, his labour and time on that production 

 have been extremely ill applied.* He desires, however, as 

 judges of this work, none but the Masters of the Science, 

 for whom chietly it was written ; if they condemn him, he 

 will be unfortunate indeed. Only three hundred copies of 

 the Pleasures of Ornithology were printed, as he never anti- 

 cipated, from its very nature, a large sale; yet those natu- 

 ralists, on whose judgment reliance can be placed^ have 

 borne a willing testimony to its merits and its truth. But 

 the hunters, the shooters, and the fishers, those to whom 

 Isaac Walton's hook is a dainty ; some of the critics too, 

 those who are fond of hunting and shooting, at authors at 

 least, have, it seems, determined that hunting, shooting, and 

 fishing, are not only praiseworthy but e\- en intellectual pur- 

 suits; ergo, his book is to tliem unpalatable: how, in fact, 

 can it be otherwise to depraved tastes ? It is fortunate for 

 mankind, that such persons form a very small portion of that 

 public by whom the pretensions of all authors and books must 

 be ultimately decided ; and, at the same time, unfortunate 

 for the author, that the sneer and the gibe of such persons 

 deter many a well-disposed reader from looking into his 

 book. 



* The London Magazine is now defunct. Its decease is not 

 at all wonderful: the continued atten)pts at wit and witicism, 

 with which too many of our periodicals aboutid, to the neglect 

 of other sterling and useful qualities, must end in their destrnc- 

 tion; they burn out with their own flashing,-— by flashing are 

 they kept alive, and of flasliing they will die. Who ever looks 

 into such publications a second time? 



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