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We want live Natural History. Enumeration of the species 

 of plants and insects in every parish is not at all the same thing. 

 We study plants and insects mainly because they are, or have 

 been alive. If you agree to sink that fact concerning them, and 

 treat them as if they were milestones or remarkable boulders, 

 you ignore the very thing which makes them particularly worth 

 attending to. 



Live Natural History cannot be worked out on a mechanical 

 plan. Two indispensable conditions have to be brought together, 

 — the living object and the thinking mind. You may treat the 

 objects as if they were dead, and you may easily save yourself 

 all trouble in thinking, but in either case j'ou make your work of 

 no effect. 



Technical terms will not help you, if your observations have no 

 human interest. The Latin and Greek may be all right, and 

 exactly applied, but what does that signify if you have nothing 

 to tell that we really want to know ? Some Natural History 

 lists, that are printed handsomely, are about as valuable as an 

 auctioneer's catalogue. Both record facts, but they are facts 

 that the human memory refuses to grasp. 



What will the mechanical way of pursuing Natural History 

 end in ? There may be, for all that we know, some millions of 

 species of plants and animals. Are we to have the parish history 

 of every one ? I should frankly admit that the names and tech- 

 nical descriptions, and records of distributions are, in some 

 cases, an essential part of the scientific history ; you cannot get 

 at the best part of the story without attending to these things. 

 But in the vast majority of cases the story has not been made out. 

 The naturalist defines his species, and records its distribution, and 

 there ends. It is not enough to tell us that these definitions and 

 records are at times useful. Don't bring them out until you 

 can show that they are useful. Envelopes may be useful to keep 

 our correspondence safe ; but what if we were to solemnly regis- 

 ter and preserve empty addressed envelopes ? That would be 

 a fair parallel to a good deal that bears the name of Natural 

 History. 



In the present congested state of the literature of Natural 

 History, which is being simply suffocated by unassimilated facts, 

 we want no more of what some people call materials, isolated 

 observations, which have no present worth, even though they 

 may conceivably find a use some day. The records grow so 



