Vlll PREFACE. 



lection for the history of nature ; and for that part, in 

 particular, \vhich has been denominated ANIMAL, in 

 contradistinction to VEGETABLE. Nor can this partiality 

 excite the least astonishment. From some animals we 

 receive the most essential services, and from others we 

 apprehend the greatest danger. They supply our 

 wants, and act in subserviency to our views; they 

 people the most retired recesses; they awaken our 

 admiration, or excite our antipathy, according to their 

 beneficial or noxious qualities, or the estimate which 

 we have formed of them. All is life and activity ; and 

 we are certain that every thing was made for the 

 general benefit of the whole, though, in our limited 

 view, we cannot always distinguish qualities, or over- 

 come the prejudices of education. 



Linnaeus and Buffon, and our illustrious country- 

 man Pennant, through their various labours on natu- 

 ral history, aided by the numerous publications of 

 others in different countries of Europe, have furnished 

 every assistance to the student of maturer years ; but 

 it, perhaps, will not be deemed uncandid to affirm, 

 that, exclusively of other important considerations *, 

 there is no work on this subject which is not either too 

 jejune or too extensive, too scientific or too miscella- 

 neous, for the purposes of schools. We still want a 

 popular explanation of the system devised by the great 

 father of this science, Linnaeus ; and, though Buffon 

 has been partially divested of his splendid chimeras and 



* " It is to be regretted that Buffon, with all his excellences, i* 

 absolutely inadmissible into the library of a young lady, both on 

 account of his immodesty and his impiety. Goldsmith's History of 

 animated Nature has many references to a divine Author. It is to be 

 wished that some judicious person would publish a new edition of this 

 work, purified from the indelicate and offensive parts." Miss More's 

 Strictures on Female Education. 



