EARLY NOTIONS OF SYSTEM 13 



natural theology than the pregnant thoughts which 

 suggest new inquiries. Hence the encyclopaedic plan, 

 even when pursued by men of knowledge and capacity, 

 such as Gesner and Aldrovandi, yielded no results pro- 

 portional to the labour bestowed upon it ; the true path 

 of biological progress had been missed. Naturalists 

 of another school described and figured the animals of 

 their own country, or at least animals which they had 

 closely studied. Rondelet described from personal 

 observation the fishes of the Mediterranean ; Belon 

 described the fishes and birds that he had met with in 

 France and the Levant. His Book of Birds (1555) is a 

 folio volume in which some two hundred species are 

 described and figured. The " naturel " (natural history 

 of the species) contains many curious observations. 

 Perhaps the best things in the book are two figures 

 placed opposite one another and lettered in corre- 

 spondence ; one shows the skeleton of a bird, the other 

 that of a man. The example of Rondelet and Belon 

 was followed by other zoological monographers, who 

 did more for zoology than all the learning of the ency- 

 clopaedists. 



Early Notions of System. 



Simple-minded people, who do not feel the need of 

 precision in matters of natural history, have in all 

 ages divided animals into four-footed beasts which walk 

 on the earth, birds which fly, fishes which swim, and 

 perhaps reptiles which creep. This is the classification 

 found in the Babylonian and Hebrew narratives of the 

 great flood. Plants they naturally divide into trees and 

 herbs. It was not very long, however, before close 

 observers became discontented with so simple a 

 grouping. They discovered that the bat is no bird, 

 though it flies ; that the whale is no fish, though it 



