THE ZOOLOGIST: A POPULAR MISCELLANY OF NATURAL HISTORY. CONDUCTED BY EDWARD NEWMAN, F.L.S., F.Z.S., MEMB. IMP. L.-C. ACAD. SECOND SERIES.-VOLUME THE EIGHTH. (OR THIRTY-FIRST FROM THE COMMENCEMENT.) PREFACE. SIXTEEN YEARS have elapsed since anything like a Preface has appeared in an annual volume of the Zoologist': sixteen years! it is a considerable portion of a life! During that period the parent work, that from which the Zoologist' descended, has been revived, and has met with unparalleled success. 6 THE ENTOMOLOGIST' was projected and commenced in October, 1840, the first number being published on the 1st of November of that year. The First Volume, consisting of twenty-six sixpenny numbers, was completed on the 1st of December, 1842, with the following announcement : "The Entomologist,' under its present title, will now cease; but the spirit of the work, more particularly as regards those brief but highly interesting communications which my correspondents have from time to time contributed to the chapter intituled Varieties, will be continued in the pages of the Zoologist."" This combination existed for twenty years, during which the 'Zoologist' gradually increased in bulk until it could no longer suffice for the requirements of all branches of Zoology, and a periodical exclusively entomological became a manifest necessity. As a matter of course, the abstraction of the entomological matter from the pages of the 'Zoologist' impoverished that journal to a considerable extent; it was a competing line under the same direction; apparently a suicidal measure; an absurdity: the result, however, has not been altogether unsatisfactory. Although the contributors and subscribers to the 'Zoologist' have slightly decreased, those to the 'Entomologist,' during the eight years of its renewed lease of life, have increased fourfold and are still increasing; and thus a multitude of young and energetic naturalists have been actually called into existence. It cannot and need not be concealed that the circulation of the Zoologist' has also been diminished by its opposition to the seductive and popular hypothesis of Evolution so ably and unceasingly advocated by Mr. Darwin and his followers. Nothing, I admit, is gained by this 389473 |