82 LAY SERMONS, ESSAYS, AND REVIEWS. [vi. 



hence, as I suppose, the name of &quot; natural history &quot; has gradually 

 become more and more definitely attached to these prominent 

 divisions of the subject, and by &quot; naturalist &quot; people have meant 

 more and more distinctly to imply a student of the structure 

 and function of living beings. 



However this may be, it is certain that the advance of know 

 ledge has gradually widened the distance between mineralogy 

 and its old associates, while it has drawn zoology and botany 

 closer together; so that of late years it has been found con 

 venient (and indeed necessary) to associate the sciences which 

 deal with vitality and all its phenomena under the common 

 head of &quot; biology ;&quot; and the biologists have come to repudiate 

 any blood-relationship with their foster-brothers, the miner 

 alogists. 



Certain broad laws have a general application throughout 

 both the animal and the vegetable 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 ethnologist; but if he dissects animals, 

 or examines into the mode in which their functions are per 

 formed, he is a comparative anatomist or comparative phy 

 siologist. If he turns his attention to fossil animals, he is 

 a palaeontologist. If his mind is more particularly directed 

 to the specific description, discrimination, classification, and 

 distribution of animals, he is termed a zoologist. 



For the purpose of the present discourse, however, I shall 

 recognise none of these titles save the last, which I shall 



