X INTRODUCTION. 



fhc wonderful adaptation of the different parts to the 

 work they have to perform. We are shown the merciful 

 organisation by which the most minute, as well as the 

 most gigantic, creature is furnished with means of pro- 

 tection against its enemies, and we learn how every group 

 is provided with feet, stomach, and teeth adapted to the 

 locality in which it is to live, and the food on which it is 

 to subsist. 



Now, since every, animal is so richly endowed by its 

 Creator with organs and faculties to : live, and enjoy its 

 life too, contributing (in ways often inexplicable to us) to 

 the well-being of Man, it follows that we outrage the 

 Divine plan when we ill-use any of his creatures, 

 and that we are only allowed to kill them when their life 

 is injurious, or their death necessary to us. 



This book, then, is written with the view of promoting 

 the more general introduction of natural history into 

 schools for all classes of society ; and this will, I feel 

 convinced, have the ultimate effect of checking, and in 

 many cases wholly preventing, cruelty to animals. 



Let a boy who is engaged in an engineer's works, go home 

 and find a model of a beautiful machine. Will he touch or 

 injure it ? will he not rather guard and look at it with an 

 admiration amounting almost to veneration? And why 

 is this ? Because he will have learned how such machines 

 are constructed ; he will have observed the infinite care 

 and delicate workmanship required in fitting them up, 

 and hence his appreciation. 



Even so will it be with living machinery ; for the boy 

 who has received at school an interesting lesson in natural 

 history, who has had the wonders of the Animal Creation 

 explained to him, and who has been taught to see the 

 mercy and goodness of God in the Insect as in the 

 Elephant, will not in his way home strike or kick the poor 

 Ass he meets. Nor will the child who has been shown 



