PREFACE TO THE TRANSLATION. 
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In bringing this work before the English public we have been 
actuated by the wish that it may fall into the hands of the general 
reader, and prove an indirect means of strengthening the now 
growing love of Nature and her ways in this country. 
It is by a true appreciation of the wonders of Nature that the mind 
becomes expanded, the perceptions quickened, and the heart refined 
and softened. A more intimate knowledge of the beauties of Creation 
inevitably conduces to delicacy of ideas and tenderness of feeling. If 
lovely flowers be seen in a cottage window, rest assured that beneath 
that roof there exists a gentler and more kindly life than under the 
next, where not a green leaf is to be seen. Where bees are kept, or 
pet birds are to be found, there is sure to be seen a glimpse, and a 
bright one, too, of the tender and more loveable side of our nature. 
One, if not the greatest, enemy to cruelty and brutality is knowledge; 
hence let us offer every inducement in our power to its acquirement 
in connection with the beauties by which we are surrounded. 
Though this work is of little or no value to the scientific reader, 
and is, doubtless, open to a certain amount of adverse criticism, still, 
taken as a whole, the main proportion of information contained 
therein is correct; while the various anecdotes and the minute detail 
of observation are, at the same time, useful and entertaining. 
As Translators, we beg to apologise for the unusually voluminous 
Errata in connection with the early numbers of the work, as well as 
