OF THE RISE OF SCIENTIFIC ZOOLOGY IN THE UNITED 

 STATES, WITH NOTICES OF NATURALISTS PARTICU- 

 LARLY CONNECTED WITH THE SUBJECT OF THIS WORK. 



The impulse given to the study of Natural History 

 in Europe, at the close of the last and the commence- 

 ment of the present century, by that emment school of 

 naturalists and philosophers which arose in France, 

 contemporaneously with its great political Kevolution, 

 imparted to the Natural Sciences an importance which 

 they never before possessed. A crowd of gifted and 

 ambitious minds, freed by that event from the shackles 

 of established opinion, and thus enabled to direct their 

 energies to such ends as suited their respective inclina- 

 tions, entered upon a new career of intellectual exer- 

 tion. With untu'ing perseverance, they investigated 

 the past and present conditions of all organized exist- 

 ences, and interrogating nature in the very recesses of 

 her temple, drew from her responses a philosophy which 

 swept away the received theories of that day, as com- 

 pletely as the new pohtical institutions took the place of 

 the anti(|uatcd government to which they succeeded. 



