ON THE STUDY OF BIOLOGY. 529 



those branches of science, such as astronomy, and what we now call 

 physics, which occupy a very large portion of the domain of what the 

 older writers understood by natural history. And inasmuch as the 

 partly deductive and partly experimental methods of treatment, to 

 which Newton and others subjected these branches of human knowl- 

 edge, showed that the phenomena of Nature which belonged to them 

 were susceptible of explanation, and thereby came within the reach 

 of what was called "philosophy" in those days, so much of this kind 

 of knowledge as was not included under astronomy came to be spoken 

 of as " natural philosophy " a term which Bacon had employed in a 

 much wider sense. Time went on, and yet other branches of science 

 developed themselves. Chemistry took a definite shape, and as all 

 these sciences, such as astronomy, natural philosophy, and chemistry, 

 were susceptible either of mathematical treatment or of experimental 

 treatment, or of both, a great distinction was drawn between the ex- 

 perimental branches of what had previously been called natural his- 

 tory and the observational branches those in which experiment was 

 (or appeared to be) of doubtful use, and where, at that time, mathe- 

 matical methods were inapplicable. Under these circumstances the 

 old name of " natural history " stuck by the residuum, by those phe- 

 nomena which were not, at that time, susceptible of mathematical or 

 experimental treatment ; that is to say, those phenomena of Nature 

 which come now under the general heads of physical geography, 

 geology, mineralogy, the history of plants, and the history of animals. 

 It was in this sense that the term was understood by the great writers 

 of the middle of the last century Buffon and Linnaeus by Buffon 

 in his great work, the " Histoire Naturelle Generale," and by Linnseus 

 in his splendid achievement, the " Systema Natui'se." The subjects 

 they deal with are spoken of as " natural history," and they called 

 themselves, and were called, naturalists. But you will observe that 

 this was not the original meaning of these terms; but that they had, 

 by this time, acquired a signification widely different from that which 

 they possessed primitively. 



The sense in which " natural history " was used at the time I am 

 now speaking of has, to a certain extent, endured to the present clay. 

 There are now in existence, in some of our northern universities, chairs 

 of Civil and Natural History, in which the term " natural history " is 

 used to indicate exactly what Hobbes and Bacon meant by that term. 

 There are others in which the unhappy incumbent of the chair of 

 Natural History is, or was, still supposed to cover the whole ground 

 of geology and mineralogy, zoology, perhaps even botany, in his lect- 

 ures. But as science made the marvelous progress which it did make 

 at the end of the last and the beginning of (he present century, 

 thinking men bes;an to discern that under this title of " natural his- 

 tory" there were included very heterogeneous constituents that, 

 for example, geology and mineralogy were, in many respects, very 

 vol. x. 34 



