PREFACE TO THE SECOND VOLUME. THE invertebrated animals, from their countless numbers, their astonishing variety, the singular forms of some, the extreme minuteness of others, the vast strength which they often display in proportion to their size, their wonderful powers of endurance, the singular manner in which many of them are produced, the curious transformations through which some of them pass though remaining the same identical beings all the time, and the great use in the system of nature of animals so very abundant and so very diversified, form a highly interesting, if not the most highly interesting volume in the whole of the good and glorious book of material creation. No where, indeed, are the wisdom and power of the Creator written in lines more palpable, even to the least observant reader; and the interest and value of the lesson are greatly heightened by the total difference which there is between the system of organisation and apparatus of life in these animals, and in ourselves, and those animals which, like us, have the frame-work of the body formed of a skeleton of internal bones, articulated upon a vertebral column. It is, therefore, desirable that there should be within the reach of all classes of the people, learned and unlearned, an epitome of this singular volume of Nature's book, expressed in plain language, and calculated, in as far as possible, to instil into all the desire of observation, and of following up that observation by its proper application, the promotion of the good of man, and the glory of God. At the time when Mr. Wesley composed and compiled his treatise on the works of creation, the knowledge of this department was in its very infancy. We cannot say that it is matured now, nor can we even venture to look forward to a time when it shall be in a state of maturity,-for the conquest of the world by wisdom, differs from its conquest by war, in this, that the conqueror has no need to sit down and mourn, like another Alex |