vi PREFACE. 



prehension of all who care to examine the myriad varieties of form and color with 

 which the Almighty clothes His living poems. 



The true object of Zoology is not, as some appear to fancy, to arrange, to number, 

 and to ticket animals in a formal inventory, but to make the study an inquiry into the 

 Life-nature, and not only an investigation of the lifeless organism. I must not, how- 

 ever, be understood to disparage the outward form, thing of clay though it be. For 

 what wondrous clay it is, and how marvellous the continuous miracle by which the 

 dust of earth is transmuted into the glowing colors and graceful forms which we 

 most imperfectly endeavor to preserve after the soul has departed therefrom. It is a 

 great thing to be acquainted with the material framework of any creature, but it is a 

 far greater to know something of the principle which gave animation to that structure. 

 The former, indeed, is the consequence of the latter. The lion, for example, is not 

 predacious because it possesses fangs, talons, strength, and activity ; on the con- 

 trary, it possesses these qualities because its inmost nature is predacious, and it needs 

 these appliances to enable it to carry out the innate principle of its being ; so that 

 the truest description of the lion is that which treats of the animating spirit, and not 

 only of the outward form. In accordance with this principle, it has been my endeavor 

 to make the work rather anecdotal and vital than merely anatomical and scientific. 

 The object of a true zoologist is to search into the essential nature of every being, to 

 investigate, according to his individual capacity, the reason why it should have been 

 placed on earth, and to give his personal service to his Divine Master in developing 

 that nature in the best manner and to the fullest extent. 







What do we know of Man from the dissecting room ? Of Man, the warrior, the 

 statesman, the poet, or the saint ? In the lifeless corpse there are no records of the 

 burning thoughts, the hopes, loves, and fears that once animated that now passive 

 form, and which constituted the very essence of the being. Every nerve, fibre, and 

 particle in the dead bodies of the king and the beggar, the poet and the boor, the 

 saint and the sensualist, may be separately traced, and anatomically they shall all be 

 alike, for neither of the individuals is there, and on the dissecting table lies only the 

 cast-off attire that the spirit no longer needs. What can an artist learn even of the 

 outward form of Man, if he lives only in the dissecting room, and studies the human 

 frame merely through the medium of scalpel and scissors ? He may, indeed, obtain 

 an accurate muscular outline, but it will be an outline of a cold and rigid corpse, 

 suggestive only of the charnel house, and devoid of the soft and rounded form, the 

 delicate tinting, and breathing grace which invest the living human frame. A feeling 

 eye will always discover whether an artist has painted even his details of attire from 

 a lay figure instead of depicting the raiment as it rests upon and droops from the 

 breathing form of a living model ; for such robes are not raiment, but a shroud. So 

 it is with the animal kingdom. The zoologist will never comprehend the nature of 

 any creature by the most careful investigation of its interior structure or the closest 

 inspection of its stuffed skin, for the material structure tells little of the vital nature, 

 and the stuffed skin is but the lay figure stiffly fitted with its own cast coat. 



The true study of Zoology is of more importance than is generally conceived, for 

 although " the proper study of mankind is Man," it is impossible for us to comprehend 



