376 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



be inseparably connected, in every system of edu- 

 cation, with the study of spiritual truths. Natural 

 history is the most appropriate handmaiden revealed 

 religion can receive ; she is always at our side, 

 ready to point out in every plant that grows and in 

 every creature that breathes, the verity of those 

 things which are unseen ; things which the youthful 

 mind, however unaccustomed to reflect, is neverthe- 

 less instructed to believe in. But there is danger, it 

 may be said, in two ways, in thus making zoological 

 science one of the essentials of an academic edu- 

 cation. Firstly, that as the science in its present 

 state exhibits none of those philosophic generali- 

 sations and definite laws to be found in the astronomic 

 world, the mind may become too much attached 

 to its minute details, to dwell upon the lessons or 

 inferences they should teach ; and secondly, that as 

 natural history is rather a contemplative study, its 

 acquirement would involve more time than can be 

 spared from studies more immediately bearing on 

 the active duties of life. Both these objections, 

 more especially the latter, appear good, and there- 

 fore deserve our serious attention. 



(258.) No fact can speak more plainly of the 

 consequences resulting from the disregard of zoolo- 

 gical science in Britain, than that it is the only one 

 in which (until very recently) no general laws had 

 been discovered. Other branches of physical sci- 

 ence have had their Keplers, their Newtons, and 

 their Davys, who have each, by slow but unwearied 

 inductions, reduced a multiplicity of appearances to 

 a few lofty generalisations, under which an innumer- 

 able diversity of facts, formerly isolated and appa- 



