01 





PREFACE. 



PERHAPS the author -" the following work cannot do better 

 than to make an CA ^t or two, by way of Preface, from Dr. 

 DICK, "On Mental Illumination and Moral Improvement," in 

 which he has shown the want of, and the advantages to be de- 

 rived from, a treatise on Comparative and Human Physiology 

 'or the instruction of youth. That a work on these subjects is 

 -varied, it is believed every intelligent instructor is ready to ac- 

 knowledge ; and whether that here offered to the public will 

 serve the required purpose, must now be submitted to the judg- 

 ment of others. 



"It is somewhat unaccountable," says Dr. DICK, "and not a 

 little inconsistent, that while we direct the young to look abroad 

 over the surface of the earth, and survey its mountains, rivers, 

 seas, and continents, and guide their views to the regions of the 

 firmament, where they may contemplate the moons of Jupiter, 

 the rings of Saturn, and thousands of luminaries placed at im- 

 measurable distances, * * that we should never teach them 

 to look into themselves, to consider their own corporeal structures, 

 the numerous parts of which they are composed; the admirable 

 functions they perform ; the wisdom and goodness displayed in 

 their mechanism, and the lessons of practical instruction which 

 may be derived from such contemplations." 



Again, the same author, speaking of subjects for Natural The- 

 ology, enumerates " particularly, the curious and admirable mech- 

 anism displayed in the construction of animated beings, from the 

 microscopic animalcula, ten hundred thousand times less than a 

 visiblej^pfnt, to the elephant and the whale the organs of mas* 

 ticatitoljj, deglutition, digestion, and secretion, all differently con- 

 triver, according to the structure of the animal, and the aliments 

 on''which they feed the eyes of insects, and the thousands of 

 transparent globules of which they consist the metamorphoses 

 of caterpillars and other insects, and the peculiar organization 

 adapted to each state of their existence the numerous beauties, 

 and minute adaptation in the wings, feet, probosces, and feathers, 

 of gnats and other insects the respiratory apparatus of fishes, 

 and the nice adaptation of their bodies to the watery fluid in 

 which they pass their existence the construction of birds, their 

 pointed bills to penetrate the air, their flexible tails serving for 

 -udders, the lightness, strength, and tenacity of their feathers, 



