FIG. 317. CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN. 



CHAPTER XXII. 



NATURAL HISTORY SCIENCES OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 



ZOOLOGY, BOTANY, GEOLOGY, AND METEOROLOGY. 



AS we have already indicated, it is only the wider generalities of 

 the sciences included in the above title that can come within 

 the scope of the present volume. If we consider the science of living 

 things alone, we come upon studies that have divided themselves into 

 a hundred departments, which have severally taxed the lifelong energies 

 of men gifted with the clearest intellects and the keenest faculties of 

 observation. It would be obviously impossible to place before the 

 general reader the details of even one of those explorations of organic 

 nature which have given form to the biological science of the present 

 day. To the multifarious and complex phenomena presented by the 

 world of living things some clues appear to have been attained in the 

 physiological principles established by the labours of the present cen- 

 tury, and by the working out into now received theories of certain 



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