An Introduction to a Biology 



of the leash, and whose chief delight is to browse 

 off and break through the hedge intended to confine 

 him to his proper sphere, in the event of the leash 

 being too weak for its purpose. Do I hear the criti- 

 cism that I am merely juggling with words ? My 

 answer is that I am trying to prevent them juggling 

 with me — not juggling in an active sense, but in 

 a passive one, like a chaperon who lets her charges 

 go where they like, and by not following them, 

 leads them into trouble. 



The wanderings of the meanings of a word may 

 be followed in great detail in that fascinating work, 

 the Oxford English Dictionary. The word " curious" 

 was used in its Latin form only in a subjective 

 sense, meaning full of care or pains, careful, assiduous. 

 Amongst the subjective meanings which it came to 

 have later were anxious, concerned, solicitous, care- 

 ful as to the standard of excellence, difficult to 

 satisfy. 



The sense in which I intend the word to be 

 understood on the title-page of this book is one 

 which includes all these meanings. The degradation 

 of the meaning of a good word like *' curious " is a 

 common tragedy of verbal life. Its earliest mean- 

 ings were qualities of the mind which were worthy 

 of nothing but praise. It is now and has long been 

 used in an objective sense merely to denote unusual - 

 ness in the form or colour of objects.^ And an 

 attempt has been made to blacken the character 



^ In the "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for 1703" 

 (Vol. XXIIL, No. 280) there is " A Descrijjtion of some Corals, and other 

 curious 8uhmarines lately sent to James Petiver, Apothecary and Fellow of 

 the Royal Society, from the Philippine Isles, by the Beverend George Joseph 

 Camel." 



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