6 PREFACE. 



therefore, to collect some of them into a small 

 compass and describe them in language which 

 I trust will be intelligible to those who have 

 not been trained in the alphabet of zoological 

 technicalities. The use of some long words was 

 unavoidable, but I have endeavoured to explain 

 them adequately either in the text or in the 

 index. 



Some of the illustrations have boen copied 

 from the works of other Naturalists, and the 

 sources from which they came are acknowledged 

 in the list of illustrations ; but the majority of 

 them have been drawn, specially for this work, 

 from specimens from the Manchester Museum 

 or my own collections. 



SYDNEY J. HICKSON. 



November 1897. 



