PKEFACE. Vll 



sitely the labour of all the rest, I have ventured, in 

 those few passages/ to extend the analysis as much 

 further than is usually done in such books, as to carry 

 the ordinary reader beyond that point at which the 

 half-informed stand in some jeopardy of falling into 

 error, more seriously injurious to their happiness than 

 any mistake that could be made in the details of Orni- 

 thology or of any other science. 



In the narrowest view that can be taken of any na- 

 tural subject, in such a way as to be popularly useful, 

 there are three general points, each branching out into 

 many subdivisions. First, there is the particular know- 

 ledge of the subject itself, in all those characters by 

 which it is distinguished as an individual; secondly, 

 there are the relations in which it stands to the rest of 

 nature, in place and in time, in subject and in event; 

 and thirdly, there are the general relations of nature 

 to the Creator by whom it has been made, and to man 

 by whom it should be studied both for bodily use and 

 for mental information and pleasure. In pursuing the 

 matter systematically, for the purpose of extending the 

 light of science over these, it may, perhaps, be better to 

 divide them, just as the constructing of a nice ma- 

 chine, a watch, for instance, succeeds best when divided 

 among many hands. But it is otherwise with the 

 public, who want the machine or the science for popular 

 use. When a plain man wishes to know how time 

 passes, he does not go to one handicraft for a spring, 

 another for a chain, a third for a balance, and so on for 

 all the several parts of a watch ; he goes to the man 

 who can furnish him with a watch in " going order," 

 and prefers one even of rude workmanship, to the dis- 



