AND COMPARATIVE ANATOMY. 35 



for the information 1 have received — if I did not state, that, 

 in listening to those luminous and eloquent discourses, I 

 felt a satisfaction in belonging to a profession which could 

 boast such an associate, and express a wish that a series of 

 lectures so honourable to the authors and to the profession 

 should receive that diffusion by the press, which must be 

 both useful and gratifying to the public. 



I KNOW no branch of knowledge more interesting to 

 mankind in general, including all ages and descriptions, 

 than the history of living beings; or, as we commonly call 

 it, the natural history of animals ; of vvhich, comparative 

 anatomy is the very life and essence. This pleasing subject 

 occupies us at the first dawn of reason, amusing our earliest 

 infancy; and supplies a fund of solid instruction and rational 

 entertainment to our riper years and more developed fa- 

 culties. In its boundless extent and variety are included 

 matters within the comprehension of the slenderest and 

 least cultivated understanding; and others, to which the 

 strongest minds and most enlarged science are not more 

 than adequate. 



The resemblance which animals bear to ourselves in 

 frame and actions, naturally leads us to ascribe to them 

 our own feelings, to fancy that they are susceptible of our 

 pleasures and pains, actuated by our desires and aversions, 

 and impelled by the same motives or springs of action ; and 

 thus excites in the mind, even of the youngest and most 

 unlearned, a sympathetic interest and a degree of curiosity, 

 which are never felt in examining inorganic nature, or in 

 contemplating its phenomena. None of the exhibitions in 

 a fair are more crowded, by young and old, the ignorant 

 and the learned, than the collections of foreign and curious 

 animals ; no books are more generally read, than descrip- 

 tions of the form, actions, habits, instincts, and character 

 of living creatures. 



The knowledge of living nature, which is well worthy 

 of cultivation, as a subject of mere amusement, at once 



D 2 



