X PREFACE. 



entirely for other and more competent hands, invading their 

 province only so far as was necessary to give completeness to the 

 externals of the animals studied. In a utilitarian view the branch 

 which I have examined may be of the most interest, but for 

 strictly scientific research the others are not less important, for 

 all must be exhausted before the natural history of an animal is 

 understood. 



If I have been more minute in describing the characteristics of 

 my animals than those who have gone before me, it is because it 

 has been possible for me to do so, by limiting my inquiries to a 

 few species, while others have embraced in their investigations 

 the whole or a large portion of the animal kingdom, and could 

 give to each species but a very limited space, and so must con- 

 fine themselves to a few facts deemed the most important, neces- 

 sarily omitting others, which when properly understood may 

 prove of the greatest scientific value. Without facts we can 

 have no scientific knowledge, and the more facts we have the bet- 

 ter are we qualified to form correct conclusions. My aim has 

 been to carefully observe facts and to accurately state them, and 

 so truly exliibit nature and her workings. If I have stated 

 many facts which others have not observed or deemed worthy 

 of note, I have omitted many observations for fear of prolixity. 



It is not to be denied that zoology, especially when treating 

 of the larger animals, man alone excepted, has been the subject 

 of less careful study than many if not most of the other natural 

 sciences. From the great extent of the field it is impossible for 

 any one man to originally explore the whole, or any considerable 

 part of it, except in the most general way, and so it has been 

 impossible for any of our great naturalists to descend to that 

 minuteness in their investigations which characterizes the students 

 of some other branches of science. Let us admire the painstaking 

 archseologist who overlooks nothing which can throw a ray of 

 light upon the subject of his inquiry. A chip from a flint im- 

 plement ; an impress upon a piece of pottery ; a hole in a pebble ; 

 a scratch on a fragment of bone, — all are noticed, recorded, pon- 

 dered, and compared with others brought perhaps from a distant 

 part of the world, until that which was dark and unmeaning 



