INTRODUCTION. 15 



attach, themselves to floating pieces of timber, and in the crabs, 

 lobsters, and shrimps of our shores. The very best accounts 

 we have, of the structure, habits, and economy of the lower 

 tribes of animals, have been furnished to us by individuals 

 who did not think it beneath them to devote many years to 

 the study of a single species ; and as there are very few 

 which have been thus fully investigated, there is ample 

 opportunity for every one to suit his own taste in the choice 

 of an object. 



And none but those who have tried the experiment, can 

 form an estimate of the pleasure which the study of Nature 

 is capable of affording to its votaries. There is a simple 

 pleasure in the acquisition of knowledge, worth to many far 

 more than the acquisition of wealth. There is a pleasure in 

 looking in upon its growing stores, and watching the expan- 

 sion of the mind which embraces it, far above that which the 

 miser feels in the grovelling contemplation of his hard-sought 

 pelf. There is a pleasure in making it useful to others, com- 

 parable at least to that which the man of generous benevo- 

 lence feels in ministering to their relief with his purse or his 

 sympathy. There is a pleasure in the contemplation of beauty 

 and harmony, wherever presented to us. And are not all 

 these pleasures increased, when we are made aware, as in the 

 study of Nature we soon become, that the sources of them 

 are never-ending, and that our enjoyment of them becomes 

 more intense in proportion to the comprehensiveness of our 

 knowledge ? And does not the feeling that we are not look- 

 ing upon the inventions or contrivances of a skilful human 

 artificer, but studying the wonders of a Creative Design 

 infinitely more skilful, immeasurably heighten all these 

 sources of gratification? If it is not every one who can 

 feel all these motives, cannot every one feel the force of 

 some ? 



There is certainly no science which more constantly and 

 forcibly brings before the mind the power, the wisdom, and 

 the goodness of the Creator. For whilst the Astronomer has 

 to seek for the proofs of these attributes in the motions and 

 adjustments of a universe, whose nearest member is at a 

 distance which imagination can scarcely realize, the Physio- 

 logist finds them in the meanest worm that we tread beneath 

 our feet, or in the humblest zoophyte dashed by the waves 



