222 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



the great botanists, from Jussieu to De Candolle, and the 

 great zoologists, notably Cuvier, made an attempt towards 

 a freer and more generous and more sympathetic con- 

 ception of the objects as well as the totality of nature. 

 These attempts were continued much on the same lines 

 till well on into the nineteenth century. Buffon's com- 

 prehensive scheme was premature, but it had a very 

 great and beneficial influence in popularising and en- 

 livening the frequently dry and uninteresting pursuits 

 of the collector and systematiser. Cook's voyages during 

 the last third of the eighteenth, and Humboldt's travels 

 at the turn of the two centuries, did much to further a 

 comprehensive view ; but the great task of the mor- 

 phologist, like every other scientific work, had to be 

 solved by special studies in separate departments. It 

 grew from small beginnings and detached contributions. 



One of the most notable of these, and one also which 

 has all along exerted a great influence on all morpho- 

 logical studies, is the theory of crystals, both natural and 

 artificial. I have already had occasion to refer to the 

 labours of Haiiy 1 and his successors. They have led to 

 a complete mastery of the geometrical forms which 

 minerals occasionally present in nature, and which sub- 

 stances assume if allowed to solidify out of the liquid 

 condition. The science of crystallography, now appro- 

 priately termed the " morphology of crystals," 2 has had 



insisted on the study of each animal 

 as an individual whole. ... He oc- 

 cupied himself, therefore, with the 

 production of a series of admir- 

 able monographs appended to the 

 descriptions of Buffon in the ' His- 

 toire Naturelle'" (Huxley in the 



chapter on Owen's position, &c., in 

 'Life of Richard Owen,' 1894, vol. 

 ii. p. 280). 



1 See vol. i. p. 116, &c., of this 

 history. 



2 See ' The Morphology of Crys- 

 tals,' by N. Story Maskelyne, 1895. 



