[Illustration: XVII AURORA BOREALIS] PETER PARLEY'S WONDERS OF THE EARTH, SEA, AND SKY. EDITED BY THE REV. T. WILSON. A New Edition, WITH ADDITIONS AND IMPROVEMENTS. LONDON: DARTON AND CLARK, HOLBORN HILL. Entered at Stationers' Hall. TO GEORGE BIRKBECK, Esq. M.D., F.G.S., PRESIDENT OF THE LONDON MECHANICS' INSTITUTION, AS A TRIBUTE OF RESPECT FOR HIS BENEVOLENT AND EFFECTUAL ENDEAVOURS TO PROMOTE THE DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE, This Little Work IS, WITH PERMISSION, DEDICATED BY THE EDITOR. PREFACE. It seems to me that there is something very unreasonable in the plan of a great many of the books intended to introduce young people to the various branches of Natural History, which have been recently published. The chief aim of their authors seems to have been to combine brevity with comprehensiveness. Brevity is, without doubt, a great advantage, inasmuch as the proverb is true, that a great book is a great evil; but in my opinion comprehensiveness ought not to be attempted in books intended for children. If it were desirable, I might indeed confidently say, that it can never be obtained within the necessary limits; and the attempt to effect it, will very often reduce the work to a mere dry table of classification. However neat and systematic tables of genera and species, and lists of names may look, they can never convey to the young the elements of sound scientific method; and will seldom fail in being useless or disgusting to the mind, at an age when it is seeking for that sort of knowledge which will exercise the understanding, without burdening the memory. This healthy appetite ought to be carefully cultivated; and I am satisfied that if it were so, from the earliest stage of education, we should have but few complaints of bad memories. The memory is apt to vanish from those who would make an idol of it; and I am disposed to think that its cultivation may very safely be omitted, as a direct object of education, if due care is taken to keep the understanding active, and to present the matter on which it is to be engaged in the most entertaining form possible. In fact, what is often termed "a good memory," that is, a ready recollection independent of the connections which are made solely by the understanding, is, as we may see by its fruits in many persons of feeble intellect, by no means desirable. An apt example of such a memory is afforded, in what Dame Quickly says to Sir John Falstaff, when she reminds him of a mixed multitude of