INTRODUCTION. 



THE task I have undertaken, and which I now com- 

 plete, is simple, and conformable to all my views, studies, 

 and pursuits. Esteem for the author and for a family I have 

 long known, induced me to undertake the translation of an 

 elementary work on Zoology occupying that difficult and 

 doubtful position in which all such works are of necessity 

 placed. Addressed to professional students, and yet not 

 exclusively so, who, partially educated, as the case may be, are 

 about to qualify themselves for embarking in some one or 

 other of the great professions which form the occupation of 

 the intellectual world, such studies seem uncalled for as 

 barren of future profitable results. That such a feeling pre- 

 vails with most professional students using the term pro- 

 fessional in its widest acceptation I am well aware ; indeed, 

 as regards the students of one of these learned professions, 

 none can know better, if so well, as I do. Director of the 

 anatomical studies of many thousands of medical students, I 

 have ever found them adverse to science, strictly so called ; 

 especially to that branch of zoological science termed Natural 

 History. They desired to be practical. Zoology is not a prac- 

 tical art : in this view, therefore, it leads to nothing. 



John Hunter had lived and laboured: his vast ideas, his bril- 

 liant discoveries, his views, which seem more like inspirations 

 than the natural result of an industry unsurpassed, lay buried 

 in the hall of a corporate body with whom, as a surgeon, he 

 was accidentally associated: but he had laboured in vain. 



