I THE STUDY OF ZOOLOGY 3 



detail, get some kind of conception of animals and plants 

 as a whole. This book deals with the zoological side of 

 biology only ; and what we have now to do is, in fact, what 

 you have often done in the study of English : you take a 

 single verse of a poem at a time, analyse it, parse it, criticise 

 its construction, try to get at its exact meaning. If you have 

 any real love of literature this detailed study of the part will 

 not blind you to the beauty of the whole. And so if you 

 have any real love of nature, the somewhat dry and detailed 

 study we have now to enter upon should serve to awaken 

 your interests in the broader aspects of biology by showing 

 you, in a few instances, what wonderful and complex things 

 animals are. 



One word of warning before we begin work. You must 

 at the outset disabuse your mind of the fatal error that 

 zoology or any other branch of natural science can be learnt 

 from books alone. In the study of languages the subject 

 matter is furnished by the words, phrases, and sentences of 

 the language ; in mathematics, by the figures or other symbols. 

 All these are found in books, and, as languages and mathe- 

 matics are commonly the chief subjects studied at school, 

 they tend to produce the habit of looking upon books as 

 authorities to which a final appeal may be made in disputed 

 questions. But in natural science the subject-matter is 

 furnished by the facts and phenomena of nature ; and the 

 chief educational benefit of the study of science is that it 

 sends the student direct to nature, and teaches him that a 

 statement is to be tested, not by an appeal to the authority 

 of a teacher or of a book, but by careful and repeated 

 observation and experiment. 



The object of this book, therefore, is not only to give 

 you some idea of what animals are, but also to induce 

 you to verify the statements contained in it for your- 



