Compendium of the Natural and Civil History of Chile

XIV

The very title of this work declares its nature: it is, as it were, a compendium—a brief record of some of the living beings and natural wonders found in the Kingdom of Chile Kingdom of Chile: an administrative territory of the Spanish Empire in South America, also known as the Captaincy General of Chile. Consequently, discerning readers will know better than to demand or expect from it that which belongs only to a comprehensive natural history natural history: the systematic study of organisms and nature through observation and classification, a task I did not intend to undertake. Beyond the fact that such a grand plan would require many other resources, it would be impossible to fulfill without having the specimens themselves at hand to consult at every step, to repeat experiments, and to form from them the countless insights that can be acquired in no other way.

Readers who are familiar with the Philosophical Investigations on the Americans original: "Investigaciones filosoficas sobre los Americanos", written by Mr. Pauw Cornelius de Pauw (1739–1799) was a Dutch philosopher and diplomat whose controversial works claimed that the environment of the New World caused all life there—plants, animals, and humans—to be inferior or "degenerate" compared to those of the Old World., will be astonished to see a country of the Americas described so differently from how this author wishes to make everyone believe all parts of that great continent to be. But what are we to do?