n.J ON THE STUDY OF ZOOLOGY. 95 



mineralogy ; and licncc, as I suppose, the name of 

 "natural history* has gradually become more and more 

 definitely attached to these prominent divisions of the 

 subject, and by "naturalist" 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 advance of 

 knowledge has gradually widened the distance between 

 mineralogy and its old associates, while it has drawn 

 zoology and botany closer together ; 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-relation- 

 ship with their foster-brothers, the mineralogists. 



Certain broad laws have a general application through- 

 out both the animal and the vegetable worlds, but the 

 ground common to these kingdoms of nature is not of 

 very wide extent, and the multiplicity 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 investi- 

 gation 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 phamomena 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 func- 

 tions are performed, he is a comparative anatomist oj 

 comparative physiologist. If he turns his attention to 

 fossil animals, he is a palaeontologist. If his mind is 

 more particularly directed to the description specific, 



