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that he shall be quiet, and let me study and understand that in my own way. If I meet with any object that arrests my attention, I do not wish to run over the roll of all objects of a similar kind; I want to know something about the next one, and why they should be in juxtaposition. If, for instance, I meet with an eagle on a mountain cliff, I have no desire to be lectured about all the birds that have clutching talons and crooked beaks. That would take me from the book of nature, which is before me,-rob me of spectacle, and give me only the story of the exhibitor, which I have no wish either to hear or to remember. I want to know why the eagle is on that cliff, where there is not a thing for her to eat, rather than down in the plain, where prey is abundant; I want also to know what good the mountain itself does,-that great lump of sterility and cold; and if I find out, that the cliff is the very place from which the eagle can sally forth with the greatest ease and success, and that the mountain is the parent of all those streams that gladden the valleys and plains,-I am informed. Nay, more, I see a purpose in it,the working of a Power mightier than that of man. My thoughts ascend from mountains to masses wheeling freely in absolute space. I look for the boundary: I dare not even imagine it: I cannot resist the conclusion -" This is the building of God."

Wherever I go, or whatever I meet, I cannot be satisfied with the mere knowledge that it is there, or that its form, texture, and composition are thus or thus; I want to find out how it came there, and what purpose it serves; because, as all the practical knowledge upon which the arts of civilization are founded has come in this way, I too may haply glean a little. Nor is that all: wonderful as man's inventions are, I connect myself with something more wonderful and more lasting; and thus I have a hope and stay, whether the world goes well or ill; and the very feeling of that, makes me better able to bear its ills. When I find that the barren mountain is a source of fertility, that the cold snow is a protecting mantle, and that the all-devouring sea is a fabricator of new lands, and an easy pathway round the globe, I cannot help thinking that that, which first seems only an annoyance to myself, must ultimately involve a greater good.

This was the application given to Natural History in the good old days of the Derhams and the Rays; and they were the men that breathed the spirit of natural science over the country. But the science and the spirit have been separated; and though the learned have gone on with perhaps more vigour than ever, the people have fallen back. They see the very entrance of knowledge guarded by a hostile language, which must be vanquished in single combat before they can

enter; and they turn away in despair. I admit the merit of the systems and subdivisions: for those who devote themselves to a single science, they are admirable; but to the great body of the people they are worse than useless.

With many works that profess to be popular, the case is not better. They are in general collections of scraps, put together by persons of no observation, the illustrations of a system without the system itself, and therefore of little use to any body. The facts that they set forth may be true; but when one puts the cui bono, there is no answer; and when one seeks for the connexion by which all the parts are united into a whole, it is not to be found.

Some part of this may be owing to the mischief of authority; and of the authority of one of the greatest men that ever lived. Bacon, forgetting for once the difference between matter of fact and matter of inference, said, rather inconsiderately, that "final causes produce nothing." The sentence is a mere opinion, and, what is more, it is a contradiction!-as, if the causes be final, what can they produce? But the sentence has become a maxim; final causes are but seldom attended to, and the history of nature, thus disjointed, becomes uninteresting. Yet final causes are, in the study of organic being, what the laws of matter are in the study of mere material existence, or what the principles of arithmetic and geometry are in the

study of number and figure. They are the laws of growth and life; and those who do not keep them constantly in view, study nature as if it were dead; and, of course, fall into the same blunders and absurdities as those who attempted to study the heavens without the laws of physics, or properties of substances without those of chemistry. The laws of physics and chemistry are nothing but the ultimate facts, to which we always arrive when we pursue the same course, and beyond which we can never go; and the ultimate facts in the economy of organized bodies, or the laws of life, as we may term them, are to be found in the same way-by observation. Sometimes they act contrary to those of physics or chemistry, and sometimes not; but when the former is the case, we always find that there is an organization, the very best adapted for producing the effect. There is not one violation of this,-not one production of nature doing any thing at any time, but just that which, if we had studied it properly before, we should have expected it to do; and when we find this adaptation universal and perfect, can we doubt that it is the result of infinite wisdom? and believing it in our hearts, shall we be ashamed to confess it? Shall we deny the wisdom of our Maker, because he is all-wise; or his power, because he is all-powerful? With all our failings, we do not deal so by our fellow-men; and shall we respect the works and contemn the Maker?

In the following pages the subjects have been viewed in those masses into which we find them grouped in nature; and the plant or the animal has been taken in conjunction with the scenery, and the general and particular use; and, when that arose naturally, the lesson of morality or natural religion. The subjects for a first volume have been chosen more for their breadth than for their number, leaving those that are more minute, and stand in greater need of pictorial illustration, to future volumes, in the course of which the same kind of scenes will be visited, though in other aspects and for other purposes.

Throughout the work, the best authorities, at least those which appeared to the author to be the best, have been consulted, as well for the collection of facts, as for the verification of original observations; but no man's labours have been appropriated without express acknowledgement in the text, and generally speaking, with inverted commas in the analytic table.

The plan, of which the present volume forms a part, has been long under consideration; and materials are in preparation for extending it, not only to a Series of Volumes of THE BRITISH NATURALIST, but to follow, or alternate those, with THE FOREIGN NATURALIST, as may be most accordant with the successful preparation of the work and the wishes of the public.

Several facts and inferences will be found in