Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/10

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iv
PREFACE.

which, as found in South Africa, more than one contribution has appeared.

When we turn to the many classes of animals still practically ignored in our pages, we are reminded of the yet unexplored areas in animal bionomics which it is the self-constituted province of 'The Zoologist' to explore. This Journal has always, and will always, seek to understand the economy of animal life, and endeavour to reveal the polity and life-secrets of our fellow-creatures—using that term in its wider and zoological sense. We may on this point quote the words of Emerson:—"I hold an actual knowledge very cheap. Hear the rats in the wall, see the lizard on the fence, the fungus under foot, the lichen on the log. What do I know sympathetically, morally, of either of these worlds of life?"

The Editor, in his annual acknowledgment to his contributors, trusts to their renewed acquaintance during the succeeding year—the fin de siècle—with all best wishes to them, belief in the future of the science we study, and hope in a renewed value and usefulness of our next volume.

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