PREFACE. 
XI 
pleasant, that it gave him the acquaintance of a 
gentleman whose talents and acquirements would 
have done honour to any country, but whose excel- 
lencies as a man of science, as a gentleman, and as 
a Christian, shine with peculiar lustre in the com- 
parative seclusion of his native island. The Author 
has long had the privilege of his correspondence ; — 
he enjoys the still higher privilege of calling him 
friend. It is with no small gratification that on the 
title-page of this volume, he can again associate with 
his own, the honoured name of Richard Hill, of 
Spanish Town. 
In the progress of the work through the press the 
memoirs communicated by this gentleman have 
greatly accumulated. The Author (or rather as far 
as these are concerned, the compiler) has felt loath to 
withhold the valuable imformation collected by the 
zeal and industry of his friend, and so kindly placed 
at his disposal ; though, being contained in letters, a 
considerable number of which are dated subsequently 
to his own departure from the island, they still 
further attenuate that thread of continuity ” al- 
luded to above, which before was sufiiciently slender. 
The Author ventures to hope that the greater degree 
of completeness thus attained in the survey of the 
Jamaican Fauna, will atone for this lack of construc- 
tive unity. 
Twenty-four new species of animals are described 
