VIII PREFACE. 



who will probably be my chief readers. I plead 

 and follow herein, the example of that distinguish- 

 ed and pleasant naturalist Charles Waterton, who 

 had both the courage and the position to be able 

 to say he had "confined himself to a few simple 

 "words in preference to a scientific jaw-breaking 

 "description;" so that young naturalists might un- 

 derstand him at once, which was all he aimed at. 

 Ye giants in natural history, for whom this 

 simple little book is scarcely fitting fodder, but 

 who may yet dally with it for half an hour for the 

 sake of the few crumbs to be gathered here and 

 there, bear with me if in my little effort to follow, 

 longo intervallo, the style of such a naturalist as 

 Waterton, I timidly shelter myself under another 

 quotation from his Essays on Natural History, as an 

 explanation of my reasons for taking him for my 

 model. "I verily believe that if an unfortunate 

 "criminal just now were defended by a sergeant-at- 

 "law, without his professional wig and gown, and 

 "then condemned to death by my lord judge in 

 "plain clothes, the people would exclaim 'that poor 

 " 'devil has not had a fair trial'. So it is with na- 

 tural history. Divest a book on birds for example 



