xii Preface. 



with me if in my little effort to follow, longo intervallo^ the style of 

 such a naturalist as Waterton, I timidly shelter myself under another 

 quotation from his Essays on Natural History ; it will serve to explain 

 my reasons for taking him for my model. " I verily believe that if 

 an unfortunate criminal just now were defended by a serjeant-at-law 

 without his professional wig and gown, and then condemned to death 

 by my lord judge in plain clothes, the people would exclaim 'that 

 poor devil has not had a fair trial.' So it is with natural history. 

 Divest a book on birds, for example, of its unintelligible nomenclature, 

 together with its perplexing display of new divisions, and then it will 

 soon be declared deficient in the main points, and be condemned to 

 slumber on the dusty shelf. If in this little treatise on monkeys I 

 shall succeed in imparting a love for natural history into the minds 

 of my young readers and at the same time convince them how much 

 is gained in the field, and how little in the closet, my time and labour 

 will be well repaid. I will introduce no harsh words to confound 

 them, nor recommend to them systems which at best are unsatisfactory 

 inventions. All that I have got to say shall be placed before them 

 in so clear a point of view, that every reader, be his education light 

 or solid, will be able to comprehend my meaning, and nothing more 

 than this can be required." Like my model, my aim in this respect 

 is to impart a love of natural history to fishermen, and to gain amongst 

 them more friends and coadjutors for pisciculture in India. In my 

 Official Reports to Government also, all the members of which are 

 not necessarily pisciculturists, I have ever studiously excluded all 

 hard words from the text, and have pushed them unceremoniously 

 into the margin ; so also in this little book any phraseology of science 

 will be found condemned to a footnote, or to the close company of 

 a plain Saxon synonym. Thus disposed no exception can well be 

 taken to its presence, especially in the names of fish where, without 

 such accuracy of expression, it would be hard to know for certain 

 which fish it was that was being spoken of. 



But lest this seeming rudeness to natural history should scare 

 away some that might otherwise do me the honour of at least a 

 cursory reading, I think I had better present my letter of introduction. 

 The following letter and the handsome accompanying Medal, which 

 I had the unexpected honour of receiving from the Acclimatisation 

 Society of Paris, is the best evidence that, though in a humble way, 



