PREFACE. 



task which has to me been a labor of love, should have come 

 to an end. Indeed, the only drawback experienced during its 

 progress was the necessary brevity of it, which constrained me 

 to omit many creatures, not only beautiful and wonderful in 

 form, but interesting in habits, and to describe others in a way 

 so brief, as to render the account little else than a formal an- 

 nouncement of the name, country, and food, of the anima]. 

 If, however, the perusal of the following pages should induce 

 any one to look upon the great plan of Creation more as a 

 whole than merely as an aggregation of separate parts, or to 

 notice how wonderfully each creature is adapted for its peculiar 

 station, by Him w r ho has appointed to each its proper posi- 

 tion, and assigned to each its own duties, which could not 

 be performed so well by any^ other creature, or even by the 

 same animal in another place, my end will be attained. Per- 

 haps, also, this volume may cause some who. have hitherto 

 been troubled with a causeless abhorrence of certain creatures 

 against which they have nourished early prejudices, to examine 

 them with a more indulgent I should perhaps say, a more 

 reverent eye. I say reverent, because it Jias long given me 

 deep pain when I have heard others stigmatizing as ugly, 

 horrid, frightful, those beings whom their Maker saw at the 

 beginning of the world, and declared very good. A naturalist 

 will see as much beauty in a toad, spider, or snake, as in any 

 of those animals which we are accustomed to consider models 

 of beauty ; and so will those who have before feared or de- 

 spised them, if they can only persuade themselves to examine 

 them with an unprejudiced eye In those three creatures 

 mentioned a few lines above, there is great beauty even on a 

 superficial examination. The movements of the snake are 

 most graceful, and the changing colours of its varied scales leave 

 the imitations of art far behind. The spiders too are beautiful, 

 even in colour ; some are bright crimson, seme pale pink, some 



