vi PREFACE. 



the pursuit of it by tin- difficulties with which it is encompassed : for those, in short, 

 wli<> have ool time, opportunity, or capacity for scientific research. Mv design is — while 

 maintaining a systematic arrangement, or in other words, a scientific classification — 

 .-rill to present the subject in a form so simple, and so far divested of technicalities, 

 that any person of common education may read it, understand it, and profit by it. The 

 ultimate objeel of Natural 1 Bstory is not to furnish an array of hard names in the form 

 of a complicated classification : these, so dear, so significant t<» the scientific student, 

 are only the means and instruments by which certain practical results are to be 

 attained. They are the skeleton: the blood, the flesh, the palpitating life, consist in 

 what is perfectly appreciable by common minds — the wonderful structure, the beau- 

 tiful adaptations, the amazing instincts, the admirable powers, the interesting quali- 

 ties, the prodigious diversities of form, to be traced in the Animal Kingdom. These are 

 revelations which expand the mind, elevate the heart, and inevitably lead the student 

 of nature up to nature's God. These are the beneficent fruits of science; they are the 

 practical results of the profound and toilsome researches of scientific men; and yet, but 

 for some such work as this now presented to the public, they must remain beyond the 

 reach of the million, locked up in quartos, hidden in the libraries of the learned, or at 

 best, seen darkly and confusedly in the dizzying mist of long Greek and Latin names. 

 My task, in comparison with that of those who explore and discover scientific facts, and 

 even of those who merely assign them to their places in the gallery of science, is a 

 humble one. and yet it seems to me necessary to be accomplished, in order to make the 

 world at large participators in the golden fruit of scientific research. I regard myself 

 as a simple interpreter of the language of the gods of science, seeking to make it 

 familiar to this lower world of common men. In this 1 hope to render a practical hom- 

 •_ to sci( nee and scientific men, and not merely to make the generation of the living 

 and breathing present share in the fruit of their researches, but to beget a taste for 

 science in the rising generation, and thus — through popular exhibitions of its inter- 

 Qg and useful facts — in the end to train up naturalists who will hereafter them- 

 Belves contribute to the enlargement of the boundaries of science, and thus make the 

 stupendous labors of those who have gone before, and accumulated the immense mass 

 of truth- now embodied in the Bubject, productive of a double harvest. Therefore 

 it is that, regarding my labors as thus subsidiary to the works of scientific naturalists, 

 I hope for their approbation. 



There is another and still larger view of this subject. The Natural History of An- 

 imal- is one of universal interesl to mankind, alike from our constant connection with 

 many of the species, and the curious and interesting facts which their structure, hab- 

 its, and instincts unfold to the student of nature. It is a subject as full of poetry as 

 of philosophy, of romance as of reason ; and it has, moreover, been commended to the 

 popular mind by two remarkable authors— BufFon, who wrote in French, and Gold- 

 smith, who, in translating a portion of his works into our language, even adorned the 



