XIV 
INTRODUCTION. 
frequent or more opportune looking after the several 
kinds. 
Those who from their youngest days have been lovers 
of “ Nature,” and who have in advancing years—even 
those of earlier date—been led against their natural 
wishes to think of the future of the field before them, 
have,—to judge from myself and my own thoughts and 
feelings in the like case—been constrained to deplore the 
onward march of cultivation, and to fear for its results 
when still more advanced on the creatures “ ferse na¬ 
turae ” around them; to sigh for the return of the days 
that are gone, those which they themselves have known, 
and to sigh still more deeply for those of a yet further 
bygone age, of which they have heard with listening 
ears, and have read with admiring and longing eyes. 
But every one of a right turn of mind will take more than 
one view of things, and the Naturalist will console himself, 
at all events to a certain extent, by calling to mind 
the many advantages to those around him and himself 
which higher cultivation and higher civilization—for the 
land is the very source and origin, in some way or other, 
direct or indirect, of all bodily advantages—naturally 
and unfailing secure. And, further than this, whether 
it be that necessitv. which is the mother of invention 
to men, asserts the same successful dominion over the 
other creatures, and, bending even instinct to her sway, 
accommodates them to the altered circumstances of the 
times, or whatever the cause, he still rejoices, and 
has reason to rejoice, in the double result,—the progressive 
advance of the age, and the preservation through all 
vicissitudes of so many creatures of the hand of the 
Immortal, which the same hand by His providence has 
preserved through a 66 thousand generations,” which 
though to Him u but as yesterday,” are coeval in our 
