ADVERTISEMENT. 



The Twelfth Number of this work is now respectfully submitted to 

 the attention of the public. This number, accompanied by the Title Page 

 and Index, renders the first volume complete. The Subscribers, therefore, 

 are now enabled to form a correct idea of the nature and object of the 

 undertaking: and from the style in which it has been so.far conducted, 

 to form some conclusion of that in which it is likely for the future to be 

 continued. 



The general approbation that has been bestowed already upon this 

 publication can be best appreciated from the extent of sale, which, to say 

 the least, has been respectable from the commencement, notwithstanding 

 that the undertaking was began under the manifest disadvantage of being 

 little known, and the very knowledge of its existence being still in no small 

 degree circumscribed. It is not, therefore, without a sense of grateful 

 feeling that the author has observed that besides the incidental sale of the 

 different detached or monthly parts selected by purchasers desirous of the 

 plates and descriptions of some particular object of rarity, that the number 

 of regular subscribers, instead of diminishing, has rapidly advanced with 

 the publication of each number in succession, and as it seems to appear 

 in proportion as the public became better acquainted with its merits, and 

 the more assured of its uninterrupted continuance. While this testimony 

 of approbation prevails, the author of this undertaking will be duly 

 stimulated to exert his best means of rendering it deserving of their con- 

 sideration. Nor has he any hesitation in believing that it will be in his 

 power, under the auspices of public favour, to produce a work of much 

 elegance, and no mean utility, either as a work of taste for the library of 

 the general reader, or the admirer of nature ; the folios of the amateur, or 

 the professed Study of the experienced Naturalist. 



The commencement of this work was necessarily preceded by a few 

 observations upon the nature and object of the undertaking : those obser- 

 vations are no less appropriate on the present occasion than the former, 



