ΤΟ ALL HUMAN BEINGS WHO ARE GOOD AND KIND TO THE HUMBLEST of GOD'S CREATURES THIS VOLUME IS MOST AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. ΤΟ ALL HUMAN BEINGS WHO ARE GOOD AND KIND TO THE HUMBLEST OF GOD'S CREATURES THIS VOLUME IS MOST AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. "Every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine."-Psalm 1: 10, II. PREFACE. NOTHING is more charming to the mind of man than the study of Nature. Religion, moderation and magnanimity have been made a part of his inner being through her teachings, and the soul has been rescued by her influence from obscurity. No longer doth man grovel in the dust, seeking, animal-like, the gratification of low and base desires, as was his wont, but on the wings of thought is enabled to soar to the very gates of Heaven and hold communion with God. Though made "a little lower than the angels," yet, through the mighty play of forces that have been at work in the world, which we, in the latter half of this enlightened century, are just beginning to recognize and comprehend, he has been lifted from the mire of degradation and placed upon a higher social, intellectual, moral and spiritual level. Out of the animal, in the scheme of Deity, the spiritual system of things is to be elaborated, and not the animal out of the spiritual. This natural world, so to speak, is the raw material of the spiritual. Therefore, ere man can understand the spiritual, he must understand the natural. Though his knowledge was at first about material things, or such as pertained to natural phenomena, yet from this through the ages has been builded, little by little, that mountain-height of knowledge, intellectual and moral, which, if rightly directed, is to bring him into fellowship with Deity. "As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly," or, Lord from heaven. When is considered, therefore, the immense good which the study and investigation of nature have accomplished, it is not at all surprising that the literature on the subject should be markedly in the ascendant. Natural science bids fair to be in a preeminent degree the pursuit of the coming man. There is no end to the books that have been written upon the subject during the past few decades, if not by specialists, but |