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PREFACE 



TO THE THIRD EDITION. 



NATURAL HISTORY and the Sciences were not 

 originally pursued by philosophers from a curiosity 

 to acquire, or a desire to disseminate, the secret laws 

 of the universe. Man is, nevertheless, an inquisitive 

 animal, and seems, by his nature, to possess a rest- 

 less solicitude about the objects with which he is 

 surrounded, and a native desire of increasing his 

 knowledge of things. Who can reflect on the 

 extent of his memory, of his faculty of imagination, 

 and of his power of communicating thought, and 

 not suppose man constructed to enhance, by sys- 

 tematic inquiry, that knowledge, which, to a certain 

 degree, must be the necessary result of sensation ? 

 And who can contemplate the variety observable in 

 the intellectual characters of individuals, and not 

 suppose that human pursuits would be dissimilar, 

 and that original varieties of genius, as well as 

 accidental circumstances of situation, would direct 

 human efforts to the acquisition of various species 



