PBEFACE. 



In issuing this volume to the public I beg leave here in the very 

 commencement to disclaim any idea of inviting attention to a 

 scientific or erudite work on Natural History, or one which will in 

 any way bear comparison with the many learned and valuable 

 books already extant upon the subject. 



The object I have had before me while writing and compiling 

 the following pages is the one of furnishing some reliable infor- 

 mation about a few of the most important varieties of existing 

 wild animals in an entertaining and readable manner. 



The greater number of existing works upon this subject can be 

 classified under two headings — the scientific and the educational. 

 "While acknowledging with all reverence the inestimable value 

 of, and the vast learning displayed in the scientific treatises, yet 

 it is no disparagement of them to say that their study can only 

 repay those who already possess some knowledge of the science, 

 for to the general reader a considerable portion of their contents 

 must be incomprehensible. It therefore follows that a man 

 anxious to peruse some interesting facts about animals and pur- 

 chasing one of these books with that object must feel as he would 

 had he possessed himself of a novel under the idea he would read 

 therein a truthful delineation of the acts and thoughts of men and 

 women amid certain given circumstances, and find instead that 

 under the guise of a story the author had written an elaborate 

 essay on anatomy, and, subdividing his charaisters into various 

 divisions according to the colour of their hair or the height 

 of their cheek-bones, had attached a cumbersome compound 

 Greek name to each of them. 



A-2 



