Xil PREFACE. 
mals useful to man in proportion to their size, would 
the worm-like leech ever have been resorted to as a 
bleod-letter, or the insect coccus employed asa dye ? 
On no occasion can the argumentum ad verecun- 
diam be employed with more effect, than when ad- 
dressed to the despisers of the humbler tribes of 
animated beings. By whose power were the mean- 
est creatures formed ? By whose wisdom were all 
their organs arranged to fit them for the place they 
occupy ? By whose will do they live? By whose 
bounty is their life sustained? Know, that He, 
who, in the beginning, created the Heaven and the 
Earth, said, “ Let the earth bring forth the living 
“ creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, 
“ and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was 
“so.” Is it, then, to be considered as a degrading 
employment for man to examine those creatures 
which were formed by Gop ? 
In collecting the materials of the present work, 
and preparing it for publication, the author expe- 
rienced unavoidable difficulties, arising from his re- 
mote situation. It was sometimes not in his power, 
from his time being occupied by other important 
duties, to consult rare and costly works on Na- 
tural History; and the slow progress of his task, 
