My dear Miss Grenfell,

I cannot forego the pleasure of dedicating this little book to you; excepting of course the opening exhortation (needless enough in your case) to those who have not yet discovered the value of Natural History. Accept it as a memorial of pleasant hours spent by us already, and as an earnest, I trust, of pleasant hours to be spent hereafter (perhaps, too, beyond this life in the nobler world to come), in examining together the works of our Father in heaven.

Your grateful and faithful brother-in-law,

C. KINGSLEY.

Bideford,
April 24, 1855.

The basis of this little book was an Article which appeared in the
North British Review for November 1854.

Beyond the shadow of the ship,
I watch’d the water snakes:
They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they rear’d, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.

* * * *

O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gush’d from my heart,
And I bless’d them unware.

Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner.