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PREFACE. 



A NEW edition of this work having been called for, I 

 was requested to revise it and see it through the press. 



The attempt to render scientific subjects popular and 

 attractive to the general reader has always appeared to me 

 a most laudable one. It has always received the support of 

 our most original workers and deepest thinkers ; and yet, so 

 far as the English language is concerned, the attempt to make 

 zoological science familiar to the ordinary reader has, in my 

 opinion, most generally been a failure. Such essays as the 

 " Studies of Animal Life," by G. H. Lewes, were indeed full 

 of promise ; but such served scarcely more than to introduce 

 the reader to the very threshold of the science, though they 

 at the same time showed what thoroughly good work could 

 be done in this direction by our British scientific men. 



In the meanwhile, a series of most attractive works on 

 biological science, and beautifully illustrated, was being pub- 

 lished in France, some written or edited by names well 

 known in the fields of scientific research, others as those by 

 M. Figuier by men eloquent after the fashion of their 

 countrymen, but much wanting in that exact knowledge of 

 the sciences about which they wrote, and which would 

 have enabled them to avoid falling into many and grievous 

 errors. 



