78 BIOGRAPHY. 



was justified. He was perfectly right in entering his 

 protest against the cumbrous pedantry which bade fair 

 to make science a mere question of memory for names, 

 and the language which he uses is not in the least too 

 strong. 



Perhaps I may be pardoned for inserting a passage from 

 one of my own works, written twenty years ago, and long 

 before I knew Waterton, so that the reader may see how 

 completely I sympathise with him. 



" Owing to the inordinate use of pseudo-classical phraseo- 

 logy, the fascinating study of animal life has been too long 

 considered as a profession or a science restricted to a 

 favoured few, and interdicted to the many until they have 

 undergone a long apprenticeship to its preliminary formulae. 

 So deeply rooted is this idea, that the popular notion of a 

 scientific man is of one who possesses a fund of words, 

 and not of one who has gathered a mass of ideas. There 

 is really not the least reason why any one of ordinary 

 capabilities and moderate memory should not be acquainted 

 with the general outlines of Zoology, and possess some 

 knowledge of the representative animals, which serve as 

 types of each group, tribe, or family ; for when relieved 

 of the cumbersome diction with which it is embarrassed, 

 the study of animal life can be brought within the com- 

 prehension of all who care to examine the myriad varieties 

 of form and colour with which the Almighty clothes His 

 living poems. 



" The true object of Zoology is not, as some appear to 

 fancy, to arrange, to number, and to ticket animals in a 

 formal inventory, but to make the study an inquiry into 

 the life-nature, and not only an investigation of the lifeless 

 organism. I must not, however, be understood to disparage 

 the outward form, thing of clay though it be. For what 

 wondrous clay it is, and how marvellous the continuous 



