198 THE STUDY OF ZOOLOGY vii 



worlds, but the ground common to these kingdoms 

 of nature is not of very wide extent, and the 

 multiplicity of details is so great, that the student 

 of living beings finds himself obliged to devote his 

 attention exclusively either to the one or the 

 other. If he elects to study plants, under any 

 aspect, we know at once what to call him. He is 

 a botanist, and his science is botany. But if the 

 investigation of animal life be his choice, the name 

 generally applied to him will vary according to 

 the kind of animals he studies, or the particular 

 phenomena of animal life to which he confines his 

 attention. If the study of man is his object, he is 

 called an anatomist, or a physiologist, or an ethno 

 logist ; but if he dissects animals, or examines 

 into the mode in which their functions are per 

 formed, he is a comparative anatomist or com 

 parative physiologist. If he turns his attention to 

 fossil animals, he is a palaeontologist. If his mind 

 is more particularly directed to the specific de 

 scription, discrimination, classification, and distri 

 bution of animals, he is termed a zoologist. 



For the purpose of the present discourse, how 

 ever, I shall recognise none of these titles save the 

 last, which I shall employ as the equivalent of 

 botanist, and I shall use the term zoology as 

 denoting the whole doctrine of animal life, in con 

 tradistinction to botany, which signifies the whole 

 doctrine of vegetable life. 



Employed in this sense, zoology, like botany, is 



