ZOOLOGICAL REMARKS. 23 



of practical science bordered on regions of the earth 

 surpassed by none for variety in the forms of animal life. 

 I allude to Africa within the tropics. Nearly every animal 

 susceptible of domestication and useful to man had been 

 appropriated by the Coptic race of Egypt and Nubia ; 

 whilst all the wilde of nature had in succession been 

 exhibited to the nation in various triumphal processions. 

 But all this was merely practical and transitory. It was 

 the same with Rome, Eastern and Western ; no science 

 resulted from it, no Zoological Science, at least ; and the 

 dawn of civilization which re-opened in Europe after the 

 dreadful period of the Dark and Middle Ages, found 

 Zoological and Natural Science precisely where it was left 

 by Pliny a tissue of puerilities, of vague hypotheses, of 

 silly fancies, upon which no critique had ever been 

 exercised. 



" Notwithstanding the occasional appearance of able 

 men, it continued in this sad state until the close of the 

 seventeenth century. Neither Zoology nor Mineralogy 

 nor Geolo2T had anv real existence. 



'OJ 



'In 1707, or about that period, two men appeared, 

 simultaneously, destined to rescue Zoology at last from the 

 degraded state to which Pliny and his imitators, abounding 

 most in England, had reduced it. These were Carl Linn6 

 and the Count de Buffon. To these truly great men we 

 owe the first attempt to remove ihe Natural Sciences from 

 the control of those into whose hands they had fallen. The 

 genius of Linne led to classification, that of Buffon to 

 description ; the one defined, the other described. But 

 the genius of the latter was of a higher cast : it anticipated 

 the future ; and men now read with surprise and learn with 

 astonishment (a surprise and astonishment in which I do 



