PREFACE. 
vii 
translated from M. Louis Figuier’s two most recent works. In justice 
to that gentleman, we must explain this statement. The History of the 
Ocean is to a large extent, hut not wholly, compiled from “La Terre 
et les Mers,” one of the volumes of M. Figuier’s “Tableau de la 
Nature but the larger portion of the work is a free translation of 
that author 8 latest work, “ La Vie et les Mceurs des Animaux j” 
other chapters, such as “ Life in the Ocean,” the chapter on Crusta- 
ceans, and some others, are compiled from various sources ; they will 
not be found in either of M. Figuier’s volumes ; but in other respects 
his text has been pretty closely followed. 
M. Figuier’s plan is to begin the study of animals with the less 
perfect beings occupying the lower rounds of the Zoological ladder, his 
reason for doing so being an impression that the presence of the 
gradually perfecting animal structure, from the simplest organisms up 
to the more perfect forms, was specially calculated to attract the 
reader. “ What can be more curious or more interesting to the mind,” 
he asks, “ than to examine the successive links in the uninterrupted 
chain of living beings which commence with the Infusoria and ter- 
minate in Man?” 
The work, he hopes, is not without the impress of a true cha- 
racter of novelty and originality ; at least he knows no work in which 
the strange habits and special interests of the Zoophytes and Molluscs 
can be studied, nor any work in which an attempt is made to represent 
them by means of designs at once scientifically correct and attractive 
from the picturesque character of the illustrations, most of which 
have been made from specimens selected by Monsieur Ch. Be'valet 
from the various museums in Paris. 
One of these charming plain-speaking children we sometimes meet 
with lately said to M. Figuier, “ They tell me thou art a vulgariser of 
Science. What is that ?” 
He took the child in his arms, and carried it to the window where 
there was a beautiful rose-tree in blossom, and invited it to pull a rose. 
