Ai-iul 1, 1S67.] 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



7:5 



HOW TO STUDY NATUKAL HISTOBY.* 



By PROFESSOR HUXLEY, E.R.S, &c. 



ATTJRAL HISTORY is the 



name familiarly applied to the 



study of the properties of such 



natural bodies as minerals, plants, 



and animals ; the sciences which 



embody the knowledge man has 



acquired upon these subjects 



are commonly termed Natural 



Sciences, in contradistinction to 



other so-called "physical," sciences; 



and those who devote themselves 



especially to the pursuit of such 



sciences have been, and are, commonly 



termed " Naturalists." 



Linnaeus was a naturalist in this wide 

 sense, and his " Systema Naturae " was 

 a work upon natural history in the 

 broadest acceptation of the term ; in it 

 that great methodizing spirit embodied all 

 that was known in his time of the distinctive 

 characters of minerals, animals, and plants. But the 

 enormous stimulus which Linnaeus gave to the in- 

 vestigation of nature soon rendered it impossible 

 that any one man should write another " Systema 

 Naturae," and extremely difficult for any one to 

 become a naturalist such as Linnaeus was. 



Great as have been the advances made by all the 

 three branches of science, of old included under the 

 title of natural history, there can be no doubt that 

 zoology and botany have grown in an enormously 

 greater ratio than mineralogy; and hence, as I sup- 

 pose, the name of "natural history" has gradually 

 become more and more definitely attached to these 

 prominent divisions of the subject, and by "natu- 

 ralist " people have meant more and more distinctly 

 to imply a student of the structure and functions of 

 living beings. 

 However this may be, it is certain that the 



* The substance of these remarks was embodied in a 

 lecture on Zoology delivered at the South Kensington 

 Museum in I860. 



No. 28. 



advance of knowledge has gradually widened the 

 distance between mineralogy and its old associates, 

 while it has drawn zoology and botany closer to- 

 gether ; so that of late years it has been found 

 convenient (and indeed necessary) to associate 

 the sciences which deal with vitality and all its 

 phenomena under the common head of " biology ; " 

 and the biologists have come to repudiate any 

 blood-relationship with their foster-brothers, tha 

 mineralogists. 



Certain broad laws have a general application 

 throughout both the animal and the vegetable 

 worlds ; but the ground common to these kingdoms 

 of nature is not of very wide extent, and the multi- 

 plicity of details is so great, that the student of 

 living beings finds himself obliged to devote his 

 attention exclusively either to the one or the other, 

 If he elects to study plants, under any aspect, we 

 know at once what to call him ; he is a botanist, 

 and his science is botany. But if the investigation 

 of animal life be his choice, the name generally- 

 applied to him will vary, according to the kind of 

 animals he studies, or the particular phenomena of 

 animal life to which he confines his attention. If 

 the study of man is his object, he is called an 

 anatomist, or a physiologist, or an ethnologist ; but 

 if he dissects animals, or examines into the mode in 

 which their functions are performed, he is a com- 

 parative anatomist or comparative physiologist. If 

 he turns his attention to fossil animals, he is a palae- 

 ontologist. If his mind is more particularly directed 

 to the description, specific discrimination, classifica- 

 tion, and distribution of animals, he is termed a 

 zoologist. 



Eor my present purpose, however, I shall recog- 

 nize none of these titles save the last, which I shall 

 employ as the equivalent of botanist ; and I shall 

 use the term zoology as denoting the whole doctrine 

 of animal life, in contradistinction from botany, 

 which signifies the whole doctrine of vegetable 

 life. 



Employed in this sense, zoology, like botany, is 



E 



