INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST 

 EDITION. 



THE task I have undertaken, and which I now complete, 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 prevails with most 

 professional students using the term professional 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. The Medical Director of the ana- 

 tomical 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 desire 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 

 brilliant discoveries, his views, which seem more like inspira- 



