PRK I- A( r,. 35 



study misj)eiit, 1 will acknowledge that 1 have lost a lew days 

 of my life. But he, who pretends to decide their claims to 

 attention, must have a mind sensible of the beauties of nature, 

 and of didactic poetry and prose, devoted to the illustration 

 of objects in rural life : and so far, I think, from deeming it 

 beneath the notice of man to mark the hand of Providence 

 among the inferior beings of Creation, and to contemplate the 

 fixed regulations under which they support the economy of the 

 animal world, he will allow that it is rather the entertainment 

 of a correctly-constituted mind to admire the originals in the 

 natural world, and tlie descriptions of their habits, and the 

 modes of applying them to the service and amusement of 

 mankind in the works of learned men. With such sketches 

 of animal life the cynegetical writers abound : and Oppian, 

 more especially, with the poetic pen of a philosophic natu- 

 ralist, deduces from the habits of irrational creatures precepts 

 worthy of enrolment in the code of a moralist. 



For leain we might, if not too proud to sloop Cowper's Task, 



To quadruped instructors, many a good ^^* 



And useful quality, and virtue too. 

 Rarely exemplified among ourselves. 



With such instructions, too, for rendering animal powers sub- 

 servient to the recreation and support of mankind, the works 

 of Xenophon, Arrian, and others De Re Venatica are plen- 

 tifully stored. 



Let us hear then no more of the unworthiness of these 

 authors or their subjects — Sio hi ju,^ lu^ryepatysiv TruidiKwg t^v Trep) Aristot. de 



Part. Animal. 



TMV aTif/,a)Tegcov ^ciwv l7r/(rxevl/iv. I know the study of them to be ^- '• '^' ^• 

 eminently entertaining, and beheve it to be equally innocent 

 and instructive. Our higher and more 2:rave studies are 



