AN 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE 
ON 
NATURAL HISTORY. 
It has been well observed, by an elegant writer, 
that Natural History is the most instructive and 
entertaining of all the sciences. It is the chief source 
from which human knowledge is derived. To recom- 
mend the study of it from motives of utility, were to 
insult the understanding. Its importance, according- 
ly, in the arts of life, and in storing the mind with 
just ideas of external objects, as well as of their rela- 
tions to the human race, was early perceived by all 
nations, in their progress from rudeness to refine- 
ment. 
Natural History is intimately connected with all 
the other sciences ; and with all the arts, from the 
simplest and rudest to the most complicated and most 
elegant. We cannot well avoid becoming more or 
less acquainted with the manners of animals, the 
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