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varied and beautiful operations of nature are constantly 

 going 1 on ; but they are almost unobserved and unknown 

 by the thousands in whose immediate presence they 

 are occurring, and to whom they might become not 

 only the source of rational and enduring pleasure, but 

 of high intellectual and moral improvement. It may 

 not, therefore, be amiss to advert briefly to the causes 

 of this indifference and apparent neglect of these 

 advantages. The chief causes of the general indiffer- 

 ence to the subject of natural history in country places, 

 and to the beauties and harmonies of the material 

 world, as it appears to me, lie in the defects of early 

 education, and the want of suitable books and instru- 

 mentalities for the successful practical cultivation of the 

 natural sciences. 



It is well known that all children are interested and 

 delighted with the objects of natural history ; and 

 hence it is that parents resort to the representatives of 

 these objects to pictures of beasts and birds, and 

 fishes and flowers, as the most convenient and effec- 

 tual means of pacifying and amusing their children. 

 And is it not reasonable to conclude, that this disposi- 

 tion to be interested and pleased with the productions 

 of nature, which is thus manifested in early infancy, 

 would, if properly cultivated and encouraged, increase 

 with their increase of years, and be to them, through 

 the whole course of their lives, an increasing and ever- 

 flowing fountain of rational pleasure and improvement ? 

 Not that they would all become expert scientific natu- 

 ralists, but they would all become such careful and 

 philosophical observers of nature, as to be able to 

 understand and admire its order, and beauty, and har- 

 mony, and to trace therein the power, and wisdom, 

 and goodness of its Divine Author. 



