On the Study of Natural History. U 



vers have been unable to draw between them a hne of sepa-^ 

 ration. 



Now, to trace these innumerable threads of affinity, so far as 

 the economy of animated beings is concerned, we must have 

 recourse, upon every occasion, to the practical naturalist. I 

 have mentioned White, as being the first of our countrymen 

 who enriched the science with these genuine records of nature ; 

 but this is not the only instance. No one has thrown more 

 light upon the habits and economy of the ornithological portion 

 of our British Fauna than the late Colonel Montague. His 

 writings in general, and his supplementary volume to the Orni- 

 thological Dictionary in particular, afford a mine of information 

 to the philosophic naturalist, and of interest and amusement to 

 the general reader. He studied nature ; and, in recording what 

 he saw, thought it not beneath him to point out that one bird 

 hop[)ed while another walked ; or that the nest of another was 

 built in a low bush, instead of being placed upon a high tree. By 

 persons accustomed to look upon systems and learned names as 

 teaching everything, these humble anecdotes will be smiled upon 

 with contempt : but by those who have entered deep into the 

 study of nature, they will be prized as facts, trivial, indeed, in 

 themselves, but assuming an importance little dreamed of by 

 their narrators, when coupled with others, and interwoven in the 

 great scheme of Nature. 



Were we, in fact, to single out all those naturalists of the last 

 century whose writings are of real value and authority at the 

 present day, we should find the list (with a few exceptions) 

 filled by the names of those who have drawn their observations 

 from nature, and made system a very secondary consideration. 

 The merits of the Baron de Geer * were long obscured, nay 



forms, then, which may, with equal propriety, be ranked -with either or 

 both. There are algae which become animalciilae, and vice versa. Lastly, 

 there are infusoria, which, at one period of their existence, are endowed 

 with the power of movement, while in another they exist only in the cha- 

 racter of a vegetable." Brewster s Journal^ No. 7. 



♦ An independent spirit, which prompted De Geer to refuse obsequious 

 submission to the authority even of Linnaeus, and an utter absence of any 

 partiality for nomenclature, seem, with a strong natural feeling for the 

 obser\'ation and anangemcnts of facts, to have been the principal causes 

 of the excellency of his works. M'Leayy Horcc Entomologiccv, vol. i. 

 part 1. xxvii. 



