PREFACE. 



eloquence of a Buffon. While, therefore, it records the manners and economy of 

 such beings as most directly affect our habits of life, it also admits that of which an 

 unscientific catalogue is incapable ; namely, the means of making the lowest animal- 

 cule or lichen of a distant country, nearly as well known to us in point of form, as a 

 horse or an oak. A systematic descriptive catalogue, founded on an artificial system, is 

 indeed very convenient for the description of newly discovered animals, when the 

 principal object in view is the possibility of their being useful or injurious to us in 

 the course of life. Those fire-side travellers who limit their researches in Natu- 

 ral History to such points, as being acquainted with the forms of the cereal plants 

 used by the peaceful Hindoos, or with those of the animals eaten by the savages of 

 the Polar regions, require nothing more than this species of catalogue ; and so far all 

 may be right. But if we descend to the description of minute mosses or insects on 

 this plan, it is difficult not to imagine that our leisure hours might have been better 

 employed. Unless it be for killing time, it is difficult to conceive what possible pur- 

 pose it can serve, to name and describe some thousands of minute insects and shells, 

 which we may never see but in the cabinet of a collector. Certain insects, indeed, 

 may attract a portion of attention on account of the uses to which they may be applied 

 by man, or the injuries which they may inflict on him. Thus the cochineal insect 

 of America, or the destructive locust of Africa, may excite some share of interest in 

 the general reader of an entomological systematic catalogue ; but these are only drops 

 in a vast ocean of species, and the writer of such a catalogue, founded on an artificial 

 system, must, when he has done his best, content himself with the credit of having 

 enabled some virtuoso to give barbarous names to a few dried beetles. 



If, however, a descriptive catalogue can be formed, not resting on the preconceived 

 importance of any particular organ or organs, but, on the manner in which the whole 

 animal structure varies, and having, therefore, for its object the discovery of the general 

 plan of creation, it is obvious that the lowest insect or polype derives importance from 

 this object. Organized nature is a complicated chain of beings, of which chain each 

 species forms a link. Every new species added to our list, serves thus to increase our 

 knowledge of this stupendous system,— a system that ought to excite in every breast 

 the most intense interest ; not merely as one of the works of our Creator, but as that 

 particular work of the Divine Hand, which has been designed with direct reference to 

 ourselves. A minute beetle of Java, therefore, which of itself scarcely raises a thought 

 in our minds beyond what may originate in its splendour of colour, or its eccentricity 

 of form, becomes absolutely important when described in reference to its fellows. Not, 

 indeed, that with respect to the particular fact itself, the world need care much to 

 know that some tribes of beetles are constructed on a plan beautiful and regular 

 beyond measure ; but when, in consequence of this knowledge, a similar beauty and 



regularity 



