SECTION XVI 

 THE HISTORY OF ZOOLOGY 



ZOOLOGY, like other branches of Natural Science, has had 

 two lines of progress, observation and generalisation. Without 

 accurate and detailed knowledge of the facts and phenomena of 

 animal life and structure, all theories of classification or of 

 origin are so much idle speculation : in the absence of the philo- 

 sophic spirit suggesting hypotheses of greater or less magnitude, 

 the mere accumulation of facts is an empirical and barren study. 



Zoology as a science, therefore, can hardly be said to have 

 existed until a sufficient proportion of the facts relating to animals 

 had been observed and recorded accurately and systematically, 

 and until some attempt had been made to classify these facts and 

 to arrange animals into larger and smaller groups according to 

 some definite plan. 



This being the case, it may be said that the common knowledge 

 of animals possessed by mankind in all ages, and constantly being 

 developed and extended by lovers of external nature and by 

 anatomists working from the medical standpoint, first became 

 scientific and evolved itself into a system some 200 years ago, 

 when John Ray, an English clergyman, first grasped the idea of 

 species, and published the earliest classification of animals founded 

 upon anatomical characters. Although soon overshadowed by the 

 greater genius of Linnaeus, Ray may safely be called the father 

 of modern zoological science, the only serious precursor of his 

 Synopsis methodica animalium, published in 1693, being the 

 voluminous De differentiis animalium of Edward Wotton, 

 printed nearly 150 years earlier. 



But although Zoology, as a science, was practically non-existent 

 up to the period referred to, much valuable knowledge of animals 

 had been accumulated, and was, as it were, merely waiting to be 

 systematised. As in other branches of knowledge, the first steps 

 were taken by the Greeks, and, in philosophical grasp, the 

 zoological writings of Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) are far in advance 

 of those of all other students of the subjects up to the times of 

 Wotton and Ray. His treatises, especially The History of Animals, 

 The Generation of Animals, and The Parts of Animals, contain an 



