26 INTRODUCTION 



purposes of study, it is improper to needlessly 

 multiply specimens of individual species. 

 These lessons, if taken to heart in the way 

 every true naturalist should do, ought to 

 prevent those who read them from indulging 

 in a wholesale destruction of plants or animals. 

 I did not, however, feel at liberty, in the 

 pages of the volume itself, to introduce 

 questions of religion, as safeguards against 

 the second and graver danger, to which 

 allusion has been made. I did not deem 

 those pages a suitable place for such remarks ; 

 but I hope that the Introduction, defective 

 as I know it is, may be accepted as a sincere 

 effort to supply what is lacking in the text 

 under this head. 



With these explanations, and this parting 

 aspiration, I leave my readers to pursue the 

 study of Nature, each in his own way, finally 

 commending it to them in the words of the 

 Reverend John Richard Vernon, Prebendary 

 of Wells, who was himself a most careful and 

 loving student of Nature, and a most accom- 

 plished interpreter of her parables. The 

 words will be found in the Introduction to 

 The Last Load Home, a work of his mature 



