INTRODUCTION. t 



THE first volume of the HUNTER-NATURALIST is merely 

 introductory to what I propose to make, in every sense, a 

 u progressive" series of seven volumes. 



My cherished object in this undertaking is, to introduce 

 within the general scope of Polite Literature, a popular 

 Natural History: upon the production of which I have so 

 brought to bear the latest discoveries of Science, in the 

 application of mechanical forces to pictorial illustration, as 

 to cheapen all their cost without any deterioration of artistic 

 value ; and bring the essential spirit of what have been here- 

 tofore as sealed books, from their excessive costliness, within 

 e> ' 



g$ the reach of the People. 



*~L Then, again, what I mean by "popular" is to be found 

 Sg in a regard of the highest sense of this vulgarized and 

 52 misused term in contrast with that of the scholastic use of 

 yet "technical" a work belonging rather to the general litera- 

 3e ture than technical science of Natural History treating of 

 5 its facts as well as cognate associations. A work, indeed, 

 aiming to be as gay as it is grave as fanciful as it is 

 profound as theoretical as accurate as full of flesh and 

 blood as of philosophy as human as it is transcendental 

 as rhapsodically intoxicate as the hale air and blithe sunshine 

 out-of-doors can make it and just sufficiently spiced with 

 "learning" not to make one "mad." A work in which the 

 Animal Kingdom shall illustrate the Spiritual, and the Spirit- 

 ual the Animal, as well. A work in which Bird and Beast 

 shall be humanized to Man through Nature, and Man shown 

 to have been inhumanized to Beast and Bird through Society 

 which shall rebuke fanaticism for its ignorance of natural 

 laws, while it shall plead against wantonness with our race 

 for reconciliation and for mercy to the humblest of God's 



