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 ‘‘ 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. 
The following sheets,” says Montagu, “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. 
