Commul sets Tharp 6-27-29 19952 (V..5.2-4) PREFACE. TWENTY-FOUR monthly numbers of the second series of the 'Magazine of Natural History' are now before the public, and from their contents a tolerably fair estimate may be formed of the character which the work is likely to maintain. in that portion of our periodical literature devoted to science, and the degree of confidence it is entitled to from those who contribute to its pages. The Editor willingly renews the conditional pledge held out in 1837, with regard to its continuation, and in one respect he may do so with greatly increased confidence, since the risk of an inadequate supply of communications, is a crisis which no longer threatens the Magazine, although one which undoubtedly existed about the time the change in the Editorship took place. Altogether indeed the circumstances under which the publication of the present series was determined on were most inauspicious. The Editor was unknown even by report to the subscribers: several of the more valuable Contributors had seceded to establish the Magazine of Zoology and Botany,' whilst another portion of them had united to establish a rival periodical, under the fallacious expectation that it would prove a source of pecuniary emolument; and no lack of solicitations and tempting proposals was wanting to win over the few who yet stood by Mr. Loudon. In this position of affairs, to have succeeded in carrying the Magazine forward and procuring for it the favourable opinion of men of undoubted scientific eminence, is a result that cannot be otherwise than gratifying to the Editor. His labor, it is true, might in a pecuniary sense, have been otherwise more profitably employed; for the encouragement bestowed in this country upon scientific periodicals is so slight, that if the question of remuneration were entertained for a moment on the part of those who are engaged in them, it would be fatal to the existence of any English journal, on the pages of which Zoology forms a leading feature. Yet it is this class of works that is turned to for information upon every new discovery in science, which is so eagerly had recourse to when the result of individual observation or research, requires rapid and universal publicity, and by which a medium of common intercourse and communication is established between the cultivators of science in every quarter of the globe. |