185 

 MONDAY AFTERNOON LECTURE.— No. 1 



THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



By Miss Margaret A. Mills. 



(Read Jan. 12, 1891.) 



The term Natural History, should be used to include the study of 

 all natural objects whether they are possessed of life, or, give no evi- 

 dence of vitality. The phenomena of the inorganic world are the special 

 concern of the geologist and mineralogist. The phenomena of the 

 nature and relations of all bodies which exhibit life, are known as the 

 science of biology, which is subdivided into two main classes — botany 

 which deals with plants, and zoology which treats of animals. This 

 genei-al application of the term is often narrowed so that Natural His- 

 tory includes zoology alone. The science of Botany includes everything 

 relating to the vegetable kingdom whether in a living or fossil state. 

 It takes a comprehensive view of all plants, from the minutest micro- 

 scopic growth to the vast productions of the tropics. From earliest 

 times this study has been much more rationally treated than zoology. 

 It has always been understood as embracing not only the study of the 

 external form of plants, their systematic classification and their geogra- 

 phical distribution, but also that of their minute structure and the pro- 

 cesses of nutrition and reproduction. The botanist has studied from 

 his garden of living specimens, and from his hot-house, in which could 

 be reared under the proper conditions necessary for their development, 

 plants from the seeds obtained from foreign lands. 



On the contrary, the zoologist had no such aid, and for centuries 

 had to limit his reseai-ches and observations to the skeletons and dried 

 skins of birds and animals, or the collections of the traveller or sports- 

 man. It was only in the past century that a knowledge of the pre- 

 servation of the entire specimen in alcohol was learned. Thence its 

 development and progress has been delayed, not from any lack of in- 

 terest in the subject, but from a dearth of the facilities and aids which 

 had so assisted the sister science — botany. 



A history of zoology and botany must take account of the growth 

 of the various kinds of information acquired in past ages through the 



