XIV PREFACE. 



retained in the second, and have been also in the third or present 

 edition of the Physiophilosophy, the arrangement and serial dis- 

 position of the natural objects having, with my increase of know- 

 ledge and concomitant views of things, been amended, enlarged or 

 diminished, as the case might require, especially in the Mineral, 

 Vegetable and Animal systems. I am very well aware that there is 

 many an object which does not stand in its right place ; but where 

 again is there a single system in which this is not still more 

 strikingly the case ? We have here dealt only with the restoration 

 of the edifice, wherein, after years of long and oft-repeated attempts, 

 the furniture may for the first time be properly distributed, without 

 detriment to its general bearings or ground plan. 



In my Lehrbuch der Naturgeschichte, the Mineralogical and 

 Zoological portions of which are out of print, but the Botanical 

 still to be had (Weimar, Industrie-Comptoir, 1826), I have arranged 

 for the first time the genera and species in accordance with the 

 above principles, and stated everything of vital importance respecting 

 these matters. This was the first attempt to frame a scientific 

 Natural History, and one unto which I have remained true in my 

 last work, the Allgemeine Naturgeschichte, the principles whereof 

 I have sought to develop more distinctly and in detail in the work 

 now before the reader. 



Thus then have I prosecuted throughout a long series of years one 

 kind of principle, and worked hard to perfectionate it upon all sides. 

 Yet, notwithstanding my endeavour to amass the manifold stores of 

 knowledge so requisite to an undertaking like this, 1 could not 

 acquire within the vast circuit that appertains thereunto, many things 

 which might be necessary unto a system extending into all matters 

 of detail. This it is to be hoped the reader will acknowledge, and 

 have forbearance for the errors, against which every one will stumble 

 who has busied himself throughout life with a single branch of the 

 natural sciences. Natural History is not a closed department of 

 human knowledge, but presupposes numerous other sciences, such 

 as Anatomy, Physiology, Chemistry and Physics, with even Medi- 

 cine, Geography and History ; so that one must be content with 

 knowing only the main facts of the same, and relinquishing the 

 Singular to its special science. The gaps and errors in Natural 

 History can therefore be filled up or removed only by numerous 

 writers and in the lapse of time. 



