PREFACE. 



NOTHING is more charming to the mind of man than the study of 

 Nature. Religion, moderation and magnanimity have been made a 

 part of his inner being through her teachings, and the soul has been 

 rescued by her influence from obscurity. No longer doth man grovel 

 in the dust, seeking, animal-like, the gratification of low and base 

 desires, as was his wont, but on the wings of thought is enabled to soar 

 to the very gates of Heaven and hold communion with God. 



Though made " a little lower than the angels," yet, through the 

 mighty play of forces that have been at work in the world, which we, 

 in the latter half of this enlightened century, are just beginning to 

 recognize and comprehend, he has been lifted from the mire of degra- 

 dation and placed upon a higher social, intellectual, moral and spiritual 

 level. Out of the animal, in the scheme of Deity, the spiritual system 

 of things is to be elaborated, and not the animal out of the spiritual. 

 This natural world, so to speak, is the raw material of the spiritual. 

 Therefore, ere man can understand the spiritual, he must understand 

 the natural. Though his knowledge was at first about material things, 

 or such as pertained to natural phenomena, yet from this through the 

 ages has been builded, little by little, that mountain-height of knowl- 

 edge, intellectual and moral ; which, if rightly directed, is to bring him 

 into fellowship with Deity. "As we have borne the image of the earthy, 

 we shall also bear the image of the heavenly," or, Lord from heaven. 



When is considered, therefore, the immense good which the study 

 and investigation of nature have accomplished, it is not at all surprising 

 that the literature on the subject should be markedly in the ascendant. 

 Natural science bids fair to be in a preeminent degree the pursuit of 

 the coming man. There is no end to the books that have been written 

 upon the subject during the past few decades, if not by specialists, but 



