XXJi PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF THE 



But this, as well as other defects and errors, 

 which have crept into his Treatise, may justly 

 be considered as belonging to the age in which 

 he wrote ; while its merits, which are infinitely 

 more numerous and prominent, may be attri- 

 buted to himself alone. 



It may not, perhaps, be out of place here, 

 just to observe, that, though the Ancients did 

 not attend so much as we do to detail and 

 method, yet their views of the whole, and of 

 general laws, were probably as correct and as 

 philosophical as ours. Their idea was to ne- 

 glect minutiae, and to attach to every object in 

 nature no more than its real share of import- 

 ance. By the total neglect of this maxim, 

 science has, perhaps, been rather overloaded 

 than enriched : we view nature too much 

 with a microscopic eye to embrace her genuine 

 dimensions. 



Zoology, as well as other physical sciences, 

 after the time of this great man, languished 

 among the degenerate Greeks. Arts follow 

 the progress of arms, and philosophy and sci- 

 ence passed over to the victorious Romans. 

 Never was a finer field opened for the cultiva- 

 tion of Natural History than Rome presented 

 in her " high and palmy state" under her earlier 

 emperors. To the study of Zoology in parti- 



