


PREFACE. 
Ix preparing this work for the public, the writer 
was chiefly influenced: by a desire to collect the 
truths of Zoology within a small compass, and to 
render them. more intelligible, by a systematical 
arrangement. He is not aware that there exists 
any work in the English language, in which 
the subject, in its different bearings, has been il- 
lustrated in a philosophical manner, or to which a 
student of Zoology could be referred, as a suitable 
itroduction to the science. There are not wanting, 
it is true, many disquisitions of great value, on par- 
ticular departments of the physiology and classifica- 
tion of Animals; for who can enumerate the names ° 
of Tyson, Lister, WiLLouGupBy, Ray, Euuis, 
Hunter, PENNAnt, Monro, and Monraau, 
among the dead, and Homer, Kirpy, and Lreacn, 
among the living zoologists of Britain, without 
