1858-64-] THE PIONEER-NATURALISTS. 115 



theorize and discuss teleology, agnosticism, spiritism, 

 morphology, mimicry, natural selection, evolution, trans- 

 formism, etc., but before everything else we must know 

 the history of every animal, of every plant, and accu- 

 mulate all that constitutes the treasuries of every branch 

 of natural history. Notwithstanding the saying of 

 Bates that " Darwin and Hooker have elevated natural 

 history into the rank of an inductive science, instead of 

 being only the observation and cataloguing of facts " 

 (letter to Dr. J. S. Hooker, March, 1861), it is difficult 

 to decide how Bates would classify the comparative 

 anatomy of Cuvier, the stratigraphical system of organ- 

 ized fossils of William Smith, or the Ice period of 

 Agassiz. 



There are two words which have an almost super- 

 natural influence on the naturalists of the nineteenth 

 century, --a circumstance which is easily explained 

 when we consider how far humanity is led by 

 words, and that fashion exists in everything human. 

 During the first part of this century, the word " revolu- 

 tion " was extensively used in natural history. It was 

 natural for persons who had witnessed the great French 

 Revolution of 1789 to liken all that was extraordinary 

 and difficult to explain in natural history to great revo- 

 lutions. So Cuvier, with his " Revolutions de la surface 

 du globe," started a whole literature. Everything was 

 revolution and catastrophe. Humboldt spoke of revo- 

 lutions in both hemispheres ; Elie de Beaumont spoke 

 of revolutions and elevations of mountain systems ; de 

 Boucheporn revolutionized the theory of the earth by 

 his explanation that the changes in its axis were due to 



