With respect to the means within the author’s power of rendering this work deserving of the public notice, either as to the novelty, variety, rarity, or beauty of the various objects it is destined to embrace, the author must rather trust to the favourable opinion which the world may entertain in its behalf, from the examples now submitted to consideration, than to any preliminary observations he can offer: he shall only presume respectfully that they are adequate to the purpose, and calculated to answer every moderate expectation his preliminary observations may have excited. It will be readily conceived that the opportunities of the author’s life, so assiduously devoted to the Science of Nature, must have enabled him to enrich his _port feuilles_ with a collection of DRAWINGS, MANUSCRIPTS, and MEMORANDA of no mean importance in all its branches. This is perfectly correct. His own Museum confined chiefly, but not exclusively, to the productions of Great Britain, have afforded many rarities, the offspring of foreign climates, which could not elsewhere be procured. But independently of those resources which his own collection has afforded, his other means have been amply extensive. Through the kindness of his scientific friends, he has had unlimited access to many other collections of acknowledged moment, for the purpose of enriching his Collectanea with drawings and descriptions of the more interesting rarities which those cabinets respectively contained. Some of those collections exist no longer and are probably now forgotten, but the memory of others, even among the number of those which have passed away, will ever be cherished with regret in the mind of every man of science by whom their merits were understood. The preservation even of the memorials of some minor portion of the rarities which those collections once embodied can scarcely fail to prove of interest at the present day, while their total loss to the rising generation will be in some degree appreciated from the memoranda and occasional references that will appear respecting them in the progress of the present work: to enumerate the many collections of private individuals, the rarities of which have contributed to render this collection of the author’s drawings important, would extend our advertisement far beyond our intended limits. It may be sufficient to observe that the late Leverian Museum, rich in every branch of Natural History, has tended in an eminent degree to this effect; the author having been favoured with unreserved permission to take drawings and memoranda of whatever he deemed important, besides having subsequently enriched his own Museum with a very ample portion of that fine collection, by public purchase, at the time of its dispersion; particularly in the different tribes of the Mammiferous animals, in Ornithology, Ichthyology, and various others; and also with every object materially important among the