212 THE NOBLE SCIENCE. 



to the trouble of courting the first blush of Aurora, I 

 should have advised such a proceeding, as a custom 

 more consonant with their habits, and by no means 

 uncommon. As the practice, however, cannot be called 

 general, it is no matter of surprise that many should 

 be unacquainted with the circumstance. I started with 

 confessing my inability to advance " anything new 

 under the sun ;" and, certainly, had I not postponed my 

 own publication, with the deferential view of ascer- 

 taining what might be forthcoming in Mr. Smith's, I 

 should not have propounded as a novelty, what, like most 

 other information now to be gleaned on the subject, 

 turns out to be as old as the hills. Professing to date 

 all my own hints on the improvement in the science 

 from the time of Mr. Meynell, up to the present ; to 

 ground them upon the long experience of others, added 

 to such slight stock of my own, as enables me to ad- 

 venture a few ideas upon the best mode of hunting the 

 country to which I have the honour to belong ; if I am 

 not to be deteiTcd from my task by the consciousness 

 of my own insufficiency, I am not to be scared from 

 my purpose, by the conviction that all which is worth 

 knowing has long been known. Contented if the reflected 

 lustre of a borrowed light should shed its influence over 

 my humble efforts, I have persevered in the arrangement 

 of that collection of facts which forms the basis of the 

 theory I would promulgate. To return from the lack of 



