nsects in the heat of noon.

Seven years I was employed in collecting animals and vegetables, and
then found that my design was yet imperfect. The subterranean treasures
of the place had been passed unobserved, and another year was to be
spent in mines and coal-pits. What I had already done supplied a
sufficient motive to do more. I acquainted myself with the black
inhabitants of metallick caverns, and, in defiance of damps and floods,
wandered through the gloomy labyrinths, and gathered fossils from every
fissure,

At last I began to write, and as I finished any section of my book, read
it to such of my friends, as were most skilful in the matter which it
treated. None of them were satisfied; one disliked the disposition of
the parts, another the colours of the style; one advised me to enlarge,
another to abridge. I resolved to read no more, but to take my own way
and write on, for by consultation I only perplexed my thoughts and
retarded my work.

The book was at last finished, and I did not doubt but my labour would
be repaid by profit, and my ambition satisfied with honours. I
considered that natural history is neither temporary nor local, and that
though I limited my inquiries to my own country, yet every part of the
earth has productions common to all the rest. Civil history may be
partially studied, the revolutions of one nation may be neglected by
another; but after that in which all have an interest, all must be
inquisitive. No man can have sunk so far into stupidity as not to
consider the properties of the ground on which he walks, of the plants
on which he feeds, or the animals that delight his ear, or amuse his
eye; and, therefore, I computed that universal curiosity would call for
many editions of my book, and that in five years I should gain fifteen
thousand pounds by the sale of thirty thousand copies.

When I began to write, I insured the house; and suffered the utmost
solicitude when I entrusted my book to the carrier, though I had secured
it against mischances by lodging two transcripts in different places. At
my arrival, I expected that the patrons of learning would contend for
the honour of a dedication, and resolved to maintain the dignity of
letters, by a haughty contempt of pecuniary solicitations.

I took my lodgings near the house of the Royal Society, and expected
every morning a visit from the president. I walked in the Park, and
wondered that I overheard no mention of the great naturalis