Vlll INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 



brighter light in another state of being ? The Scrip- 

 tures afford no clue by which to answer these ques- 

 tions, and, from the animals themselves we can gain 

 no information, being precluded from anything like 

 an interchange of ideas, by the want of a channel of 

 communication. Our acquaintance with them is thus 

 of necessity limited to the observations which we are 

 enabled to make by watching them in their native 

 haunts, or studying them in a state of domestication, 

 and to the conclusions which we endeavour to draw 

 from anatomy, and from analogy. These observa- 

 tions, accumulated by the labours of ages, form the 

 basis of that branch of Natural History of which 

 this work is intended to treat, Zoology.* From the 

 scarcity of many of the subjects, their remoteness 

 from civilized countries, their jealous seclusion in 

 recesses the most wild and difficult of access, and the 

 brief and casual and often solitary notices on which 

 many of our recorded conclusions rest, the science 

 still contains much that is erroneous in theory, and 

 false in fact. Of exceedingly few animals can our 

 knowledge be said even to approach perfection ; of 

 the great majority we know very little, of some we 

 know barely the form, or perhaps the skeleton, or 

 perhaps a single disjointed limb : while there are 

 vast tracts of land, such as the interior of Australia, 

 the expanse of Africa, the immense islands of the 

 Indian archipelago, Madagascar, and New Zealand, 

 some of which teem with animal life in its most 

 gigantic forms, where the foot of civilized man has 

 never trod. 



* Zuov, zoon, an animal, and x'oyas, logos, a discourse. 



