vi 
PREFACE. 
the pursuit of it by the difficulties with which it is encompassed ; for those, in short, 
who have not time, opportunity, or capacity for scientific research. Mj design is — while 
maintaining a systematic arrangement, or in other words, a scientific classification — 
still to present the subject in a form so simple, and so far divested of technicalities, 
that any person of common education may read it, understand it, and profit by it. The 
ultimate object of ISTatural History is not to furnish an array of hard names in the form 
of a complicated classification ; these, so dear, so significant to the scientific student, 
are only the means and instruments by which certain practical results are to be 
attained. They are the skeleton : the blood, the flesh, the j)alpitating life, consist in 
what is perfectly appreciable by common minds — the wonderful structure, the beau- 
tiful adaptations, the amazing instincts, the admirable powers, the interesting quali- 
ties, the prodigious diversities of form, to be traced in the Animal Kingdom. These are 
revelations which expand the mind, elevate the heart, and inevitably lead the student 
of nature up to nature's God. These are the beneficent fruits of science ; they are the 
practical results of the profound and toilsome researches of scientific men; and yet, but 
for some such work as this now presented to the public, they must remain beyond the 
reach of the million, locked up in quartos, hidden in the libraries of the learned, or at 
best, seen darkly and confusedly in tlie dizzjdng mist of long Greek and Latin names. 
My task, in comparison with that of those who exj)lore and discover scientific facts, and 
even of those who merely assign them to their places in the gallery of science, is a 
humble one, and yet it seems to me necessary to be accomplished, in order to make the 
world at large participators in the golden fruit of scientific research. I regard myself 
as a simple interpreter of the language of the gods of science, seeking to make it 
familiar to this lower world of common men. In this I hope to render a practical hom- 
age to science and scientific men, and not merely to make the generation of the living 
and breathing ]3resent share in the fruit of their researches, but to beget a taste for 
science in the rising generation, and thus — through popular exhibitions of its inter- 
esting and useful facts — in the end to train up naturalists who will hereafter them- 
selves contribute to the enlargement of the boundaries of science, and thus make the 
stupendous labors of those who have gone before, and accumulated the immense mass 
of truths now embodied in the subject, productive of a double harvest. Therefore 
it is that, regarding my labors as thus su.bsidiary to the works of scientific naturalists, 
I hope for their approbation. 
There is another and still larger view of this subject. The IN'atural History of An- 
imals is one of universal interest to mankind, alike from our constant connection with 
many of the species, and the curious and interesting facts which their structure, hab- 
its, and instincts unfold to the student of nature. It is a subject as full of poetry as 
of philosophy, of romance as of reason ; and it has, moreover, been commended to the 
popular mind by two remarkable authors — Bufi'on, who wrote in French, and Gold- 
smith, who, in translating a portion of his works into our language, even adorned the 
