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placing before you the discoveries which have been made by another ; 

 and you will probably imagine that this acknowledgement can hardly be 

 made without occasioning me to experience some degree of mortifica- 

 tion. But the truth is, that knowing, that as you proceed you must be 

 highly pleased, I am thoroughly satisfied with merely recounting to you 

 the most prominent particulars of those important discoveries, which have 

 rewarded the patient and unabating exertions of Cuvier. If it should occur 

 toyou that the name of thisjustly celebrated anatomist should too frequently 

 meet your eye in the following pages, remember that this necessarily re- 

 sults from the number and importance of his discoveries, and consider, that 

 if we were giving a history of galvanism, of the alkalies, earths, metals, &c. 

 how frequently, in like manner, must the pen be engaged in reporting the 

 important discoveries of our illustrious Davy. To have admitted less of 

 the discoveries of Cuvier, in the present work, would have been unjust 

 to those many who cannot obtain the voluminous, expensive, and almost 

 prohibited works, in which they are contained. To have introduced less 

 would indeed have been to have sparingly employed the only light almost 

 which has ever been thrown on this most interesting subject. 



I must here also crave your attention, while I excuse myself for again 

 departing from that classification which has been so long established by 

 the truly great Linnaeus. The natural method of classification, employed 

 by Dumeril, Zoologie Analytique, ou Methodc Naturelle de Classification des 

 Animaux, par A. M. C. Dumeril, is generally adopted by Cuvier ; and his 

 discoveries are related in the nomenclature, as well as in the order, of that 

 arrangement. Hence, although it will not be difficult for those who wish 

 to adhere to the Linnaean system to understand, with a little explana- 

 tion, to what species, &c. every observation is intended to refer, yet it 

 would be impossible, without considerable confusion, to give the disco- 

 veries of Cuvier in the terms, or agreeable to the arrangement, of that 

 system ; since his observations refer to particular families which are com- 

 posed of genera, which in the Linnsean arrangement are dispersed under 

 several different orders. 



