xvi 



PLAN OF STUDY. 



tion, is of more value in training the mind to the love of truth, 

 and to the admiration of the beautiful contrivances of Providen- 

 tial wisdom in adapting means for the accomplishment of parti- 

 cular ends, than the mere technical knowledge of all the classed 

 divisions and numerous species of the animal kingdom, so falsely 

 called science. 



It has been objected by a clever naturalist, that I have here 

 given no 66 plan of study," and I am referred to Kirby and 

 Spence,* for the model of such a plan ; but on looking at this 

 model, I am not inclined to follow it, inasmuch as it is precisely the 

 plan I object to pursuing. The following of such a plan as theirs, 

 could not readily lead to the production of so admirable a work as 

 the first two volumes of their Entomology, the success of which 

 has proved its high excellence ; while it is precisely the plan that 

 would lead to their last two volumes, the greater part of which 

 consists of technicalities of small use, many of them inaccurate, 

 that very few will ever read, and fewer still will care to remember. 



The present work will, in the point of view alluded to, be of 

 considerable use; for though I am well aware, that neither this nor 

 any other upon so multifarious a subject can be free from mis- 

 takes and uncertainty on many points of inquiry, yet such errors 

 as may be discovered, will seldom be found to arise from the igno- 

 rant copying of what has been previously copied a hundred times 

 over, by compilers unacquainted with the subject, — a practice 

 which has been the bane and ruin of Natural History. Colonel 

 Montagu, indeed, has been equalled by few and surpassed by 

 none of our British naturalists as an original observer, though 

 Ray, Willughby, and Pennant, were better acquainted with 

 book-learning, and White of Selborne was a more eloquent and 

 pleasing writer ; while what is of great importance in the present 

 work, is, that we can always depend on the good faith of the 

 author in stating what he believed, from all the information he 

 could procure, to be genuine facts. 



u The following sheets," says Montagu, 44 have been entirely 

 drawn from our own observations, and compiled from the notes of 

 twenty years' search and attention to the habits of this beautiful 

 part of the creation in most parts of this kingdom. The wood, 

 the mountain, and the barren waste, the craggy rock, the river, 



* Intro, iv. 547. 



