INTRODUCTION. 
From the fount of science are perpetually poured 
forth pleasures, and advantages of the purest kind. The 
depraved appetite of man, glutted through a series of ages 
with the intoxicating draughts of depravity, fashion and 
adulation is at length beginning to long for that stream 
of knowledge which Nature in her depth of wisdom and 
condescension, has directed to flow by us in all our 
situations and abodes,—even in our most flagrant depart¬ 
ures from that path wherein it has pleased her we should 
walk. Under the influence of a somewhat improved 
mode of education, the ameliorated condition of the public 
mind makes it superfluous for me here to set forth, or 
eulogize the immense importance of receiving at the 
hands of Nature those species of refreshments which our 
mental constitutions have been adapted to digest. But, 
although it may in some degree be unnecessary to insist 
on this in a general point of view. Naturalists may now 
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