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Show vi JtEMARK~. ways excepted where the mistake was evidently and purely typographical), but by a note, either on the page itself, or in the appendix. Thus, whatever has been added, nothing has been taken away, and the text of my author remains as I found it. It was originally my intention to have made considerable additions of American species to the Entomology, but to such an extent has the formation of new genera and the division of old ones lately been carried, that it would have required more time to do this correctly than to translate the whole book, and consequently I was compelled to abandon it. Of the Fishes of this country nothing can be said, until we are in possession of the expected work of M. Lesueur. The period in which America was compelled to look to Europe for a knowledge of her own productions has terminated; and our Wilson, Say, Ord, LeConte, Harlan, Hentz, Audubon, &c. &c. are repaying the debt with usury. Nor is this spirit of observation abating. The increasing number of institutions exclusively devoted to the natural sciences, in almost every section of our extensive country, shows the reverse to be the fact, and authorizes us to expect the most splendid results from their united efforts. I cannot conclude without acknowledging my obligations to Major Le Conte for his valuable communications on various portions of the Regne Animal. The results of his critical and laborious investigations are chiefly to be found in the notes on American birds, and the Catalogue which closes this volume, and I have only to regret that the unfinished state of the work on the Lepidoptera of North America, which is now being published at Paris by him and M. Boisduval, prevented me from employing it. fl. M'MURTRIE. Philadelphia, June 1831 . PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. HAVING devoted myself from my earliest youth to the study of comparative anatomy, that is to the laws of the organization of animals and of the modifications this organization undergoes in the various species, and having, for nearly thirty years since, consecrated to that science every moment of which my duties allowed me to dispose, the constant aim of my labours has been to reduce it to general rules, and to propositions which may contain their most simple expression. My first essays soon made me perceive, that I could only attain this in proportion as the animals, whose structure_ I should have to elucidate, were arranged in conformity with that structure, so that in one single name of class, order, genus, &c. might be embraced all those species which, in their external as well as internal conformation, have affinities either more general or particular. Now this is what the greater number of naturalists of that epoch had never attempted, and what but few of them could have effected, had they eveti been willing to try, since a similar arrangement presupposes an extensive knowledge of the structures, of which it is partly the representation. It is true, that Daubenton and Camper had given facts, that Pallas had indicated views : but the ideas of these learned men had not yet exercised upon their contemporaries the influence they merited. The only general catalogue of animals then in existence, and the only one we possess even now, the system of Linnreus, had just been disfigured by an unfortubate editor, who did not even take the pains to examine the prin· |
