6 INTRODUCTION. 
of Natura] History has been too much circumscribed within 
the mere formulas of Scientific utility to meet the mental 
requisitions of the period in its text, or the practical demand 
for cheapness in its illustration, which the rapid progress 
of discoyery in this department clearly demands! I have, 
therefore, i in bringing this enterprise to a head, consistently 
acted with an early conceived purpose, that so far as the 
devotion of individual energies could go, the General Mind 
should no longer be thus rudely shut off from the contempla- 
tion of themes which, in their free and legitimate presenta- 
tion, are the most healthful, refreshing and ennobling! I 
speak this in no arrogance, for of such I have no sense—but 
of a collected purpose. <n 
I have remarked that this first Volume is put forward as 
merely an introductory to the Series. My object has been 
to present my Reader at once to the Hunter-Naturalist in 
that broad and comprehensive meaning of the character which 
it implies to me. The Narrative and Sketchy form into which 
I have moulded this Volume, is to continue a distinctive feature 
of the Series. The wild creature and its Human peer must go 
together in our treatment—the one re-acts upon and modifies 
the other; let us exhibit the passions and the life of both. 
Therefore, in each successive volume, whether it be the Wild 
Indian and his Buffalo—the Trapper and his Beaver—the 
buck-skinned Nomad of Art and Science, with Specimen-box 
and precious Port-folio of Drawings—or the amateur Adven- 
turer with his insatiable appetite for novelty—however foreign, 
strange, or distant such may be, they shall appear amidst their 
separate accessories of the Animal World. 
Each Volume shall contain at least five such Plates as those 
we give in this, devoted to the illustration of the Wild Scenes 
of our own Indian Border Life, which will be furnished from 
the noble and unequalled pencil of Alfred J. Miller, of Bal- 
timore, who accompanied Sir William Drummond Stuart, on 
his noted expedition among the Indian Tribes of the Plains, 
as Artist. How splendidly he has accomplished his mission, 
