FOR PARENTS. THE design of this book can be stated in a few words, namely, to interest children in the study of natural his tory, and of physical and political geography. I. It would be hard to find a child indifferent to stories about animals. The number of books, both systematic and unsystematic, to which this fact has given rise is very large; but the enormous progress in zoological science has been fatal to the survival of most of them. Children of a prior generation had their curiosity about the brute creation satisfied by White's Selborne and Bewick's Quadrupeds; and the former classic is even now reprinted in popular editions, with illustrations which may and do attract the young. But adults, and even scholars, alone can enjoy Selborne to the full; while not merely is the Quadrupeds out of print and difficult to procure, but its text is too antiquated to be use fully put before a child. Its incomparable illustrations deserve a perpetual lease of life. The first section of the pres ent compilation, entitled "Animals," though written more |