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 1 exact mean- 

 ing. 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 mathematics 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 educa- 

 tional benefit of the study of science is that it sends the 

 student direct to nature, and teaches him that a state- 

 ment 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- 



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