Produced by Chris Curnow, Les Galloway, Rachael Shultz, (Scholar), for the large tables, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
Variations in hyphenation have been standardised, but other variations in spelling, accents and punctuation are as in the original.
There are several very wide tables in the book (e.g. Table A is 16 columns/380 characters wide). These have been divided into blocks of 3 or 4 columns. The row alignment has been preserved and, where appropriate. the 1st column repeated for each block.
The Errata and Corrigenda have been implemented, except for the final item:
_For the words_ evolution _and_ evolved, _read passim in the Botanical and Zoological parts_, perfection _and_ perfected, _as the text may require_.
[Illustration: Portrait of a man, signed W Bagg]
PROFESSOR OF NATURAL HISTORY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ZÜRICH; &c. &c.
MEMBER OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS OF ENGLAND.
LONDON: PRINTED FOR THE RAY SOCIETY. MDCCCXLVII.
C. AND J. ADLARD, PRINTERS, BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE.
"Of all truths relating to phenomena, the most valuable to us are those which relate to the order of their succession. On a knowledge of these is founded every reasonable anticipation of future facts, and whatever power we possess of influencing those facts to our advantage. Even the laws of geometry are chiefly of practical importance to us as being a portion of the premises from which the order of the succession of phenomena may be inferred."
Begun in the autumn of the year 1845, without the cognizance, or at the suggestion of a single human being, the present Translation is due to the fact of its original having encountered a somewhat kindred spirit, and aroused therein the desire to render others participant, if possible, in the large amount of instruction it is so well calculated to afford. And now that the work is done, what remains for the labourer at second-hand to say by way of preamble to his newly-dressed wares? Had the book been printed within the pale of a philosophical or physico-theological sect, the Translator's final duty would have been clearly enough prescribed. Already bound to the profession of "particular tenets," his main object would be to indulge in a laudatory but servile abstract of his author's doctrines, or, if having set out with the expressed intention of illustrating their bearings upon the state of science past, present, and to come, he would become so drunk beforehand with the large and unbridled potation of his creed, as to surprise the casual reader by informing him that such an intention is useless, for the two stand in direct antithesis to each other. Examples of this mode of procedure are not wanting at the present day, whether at home or abroad. They are the produce of that spirit, which, rife enough in the Middle Ages, has been so graphically described by Professor Whewell under the title of the "Commentatorial," and "whose professed object is to explain, to enforce, to illustrate doctrines assumed to be true, but not to obtain additional truths or new generalizations." While from dealings of this character, as being utterly opposed to the sacred cause of Truth, I turn away with feelings of repugnance, to which the lessons of some personal experience have lent their aid, it is not my business, upon the other hand, to enter the lists of controversy against those who, having neither the capacity, nor the desire of its cultivation, for the higher walks of science, delight to dismiss a work of the present kind with some idle anathema of mysticism or evasive outcry for more facts.