hink will possess some interest for the general
reader. I have in this edition largely condensed and corrected some
parts, and have added a little to others, in order to render the
volume more fitted for popular reading; but I trust that
naturalists will remember that they must refer for details to the
larger publications which comprise the scientific results of the
Expedition. The "Zoology of the Voyage of the 'Beagle'" includes an
account of the Fossil Mammalia, by Professor Owen; of the Living
Mammalia, by Mr. Waterhouse; of the Birds, by Mr. Gould; of the
Fish, by the Reverend L. Jenyns; and of the Reptiles, by Mr. Bell.
I have appended to the descriptions of each species an account of
its habits and range. These works, which I owe to the high talents
and disinterested zeal of the above distinguished authors, could
not have been undertaken had it not been for the liberality of the
Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, who, through the
representation of the Right Honourable the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, have been pleased to grant a sum of one thousand pounds
towards defraying part of the expenses of publication.

I have myself published separate volumes on the "Structure and
Distribution of Coral Reefs"; on the "Volcanic Islands visited
during the Voyage of the 'Beagle'"; and on the "Geology of South
America." The sixth volume of the "Geological Transactions"
contains two papers of mine on the Erratic Boulders and Volcanic
Phenomena of South America. Messrs. Waterhouse, Walker, Newman, and
White, have published several able papers on the Insects which were
collected, and I trust that many others will hereafter follow. The
plants from the southern parts of America will be given by Dr. J.
Hooker, in his great work on the Botany of the Southern Hemisphere.
The Flora of the Galapagos Archipelago is the subject of a separate
memoir by him, in the "Linnean Transactions." The Reverend
Professor Henslow has published a list of the plants collected by
me at the Keeling Islands; and the Reverend J.M. Berkeley has
described my cryptogamic plants.

I shall have the pleasure of acknowledging the great assistance
which I have received from several other naturalists in the course
of this and my other works; but I must be here allowed to return my
most sincere thanks to the Reverend Professor Henslow, who, when I
was an undergraduate at Cambridge, was one chief means of giving me
a taste for Natural History,--who, dur