104 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
served, or, if observed, unrecorded. He may thus 
remove the veil from one stone at least of the temple 
of nature ; or he may, by the discovery of one single 
but important fact, clear away an accumulation of 
doubts and difficulties that have long impeded the 
path of the greatest adepts. Let us not, therefore, 
affect to despise, as some among us have done, the 
describer of species; but remember that in the temple 
of nature there are niches for all her votaries. 
(54.) Natural history has generally been termed 
a science of observation; and such, in a restricted 
sense, it undoubtedly is. The error of the definition 
is this, not that it is untrue, but that it is partial and 
insufficient. What would be thought of an astro- 
nomer who defined the study of the heavenly bodies 
to consist in a correct nomenclature of the stars, an 
accurate computation of their relative magnitudes, 
and of the various appearances which, under parti- 
cular circumstances, they assume? Suppose, also, 
that the business of the mineralogist was simply to 
study the external forms of the substances of the 
earth, to compile a dictionary of their names, and to 
point out the uses to which they could be applied. In 
either of these cases it would be manifest that the 
essential philosophy of these sciences would be lost 
sight of ; that we should merely be regarding the 
surface of things, and be busying ourselves about 
effects, to the utter neglect of those great and sub- 
lime causes which are unfolded by the laws of gra- 
vitation, the theory of motion, and all those splendid 
truths which give such dignity to these seiences. 
As it is with astronomy and chemistry, sa is it with 
natural history: . knowledge of individuals, and of 
a RS 
