November 7, 1895] 



NATURE 



that the time of maximum may be ascertained as well as the 

 aggregate number visible during the period covered by 

 the watch. The other will register the individual paths 

 of well-observed meteors on a star chart or celestial 

 globe, determine the place of the radiant and its 

 character, especially note large meteors and any other 

 peculiarities that may offer themselves. One observer, 

 working single-handed, may do a great deal by dividing 

 his attention between the various points alluded to. It 

 is always important to separate the number of meteors 

 \isible in a special shower from the total number seen, 

 for the aggregate counted must exceed the actual strength 

 of a particular strearn, since it includes the sporadic 

 meteors. When reckoning the visible meteors, therefore, 

 the observer will do well to keep an account of the number 

 unconformable with the radiant of the main display. The 

 radiant of the Leonids can be readily assigned, not only 

 because of the afterflows or phosphorescent streaks left 

 by the meteors, which assist the eye in fixing their exact 

 directions, but also on account of the well-known asterism 

 involving it. The Leonids exhibit a more contracted 

 area of radiation than the Andromedes, but it is a feature 

 not yet thoroughly investigated. By selecting a number 

 of well-observed tracks near the radiant, the extent of 

 its diffusion may be readily determined. The writer has 

 sometimes found the centre so definite that the conform- 

 able paths have intersected at a point. 



W. F. Denning. 



THE OLD AND NEW NATURALISTS. 



"NT ATURALISTS, like the animals and plants of which 

 -'-^ they discourse, are subject to the process of 

 evolution. The naturalist of the latter end of the nine- 

 teenth century is not quite the same species as that which 

 bore the name at the end of the eighteenth. Differentia- 

 tion has been at work. So markedly indeed is this the 

 case, that one is tempted to ask whether the species, as 

 such, is not well-nigh extinct. To-day there are biologists, 

 comparative anatomists and physiologists, systematic 

 botanists and systematic zoologists, pakeontologists and 

 embryologists. But where is the naturalist ? Has he not 

 been swallowed up by and distributed among his poly- 

 ological progeny ? And yet the word is still in use, and 

 carries with it a more or less specialised implication. 

 The other day a friend, who was discussing with me the 

 work of an acquaintance, said : " He's a capital 

 anatomist ; it's a pity he's not more of a naturalist" ; and 

 I had no difficulty in catching his meaning. It may be 

 worth while to consider the relative position and status of 

 the old and of the new naturalist. 



In one of his luminous essays — that on the study of 

 biology— Prof. Huxley reminds us that HobbesofMalmes- 

 bury (Leviathan Hobbes) said : " The register of know- 

 ledge of fact is called history. Whereof there be two 

 sorts, one called natural history ; which is the history of 

 such facts or effects of nature as have no dependence on 

 man's will ; such as are the history of metals, plants, 

 animals, regions, and the like. The other is civil his- 

 tory ; which is the history of the voluntary actions of men 

 in commonwealths.'' In Hobbes's terminology, then, 

 naturalist was synonymous with man of science. Indeed, 

 until quite a recent date, as I am told, the Professor of 

 Zoology in one of our northern universities bore as his 

 technical title the designation Professor of Natural and 

 Civil History. Gradually the field of the naturalist was 

 restricted. Those branches of science which seemed to 

 be specially susceptible of mathematical treatment were 

 allotted to the natural philosopher ; the naturalist, as 

 such, continued to deal with physical geography, geology, 

 mineralogy, and the history of plants and animals. The 

 names of Buffon and of Humboldt at once rise to our 

 minds as those of naturalists of this encyclopaedic type. 



NO. 1358, VOL. 53] 



But the progress of knowledge, and the vast accumula- 

 tion of facts, necessitated further division of labour ; and 

 by this further differentiation the field of the naturalist 

 was yet further limited to the natural history of animals 

 and of plants. Nor did the process of differentiation stop 

 here. To-day we have herpetologists and ichthyologists ; 

 we have zootomists and embryologists ; we have sys- 

 tematic botanists and evolutionists ; but where, one may 

 again ask, is the naturalist ? 



I take it that the term " naturalist," as we now use it, 

 implies the sympathetic study of animals and plants in 

 their varied relations to each other under the natural con- 

 ditions of their customary habitat. In short the naturalist 

 is in great part what Prof. Ray Lankester would call a 

 student of bionomics, or what Semper called an investi- 

 gator of the higher physiology of organisms. His calling 

 is a protest, first, against the wide-spread error that 

 physiology ends with the individual ; and secondly, against 

 the no less erroneous view that science ends with analysis. 

 The naturalist sees in the individual animal or plant 

 merely a constituent unit in a connected whole ; and 

 welcomes the most minute analysis chiefly as a means to 

 a more complete synthesis. 



Looking back to naturalists of the past in the light ot 

 this conception, it is of Gilbert White of Selborne that we 

 feel the term to be exactly descriptive ; and in the old 

 days it was the man of leisure like White, the sportsman 

 like St. John, or the angler like Izaak Walton, that was 

 the best and most characteristic naturalist. They started 

 with no equipment of special training, indeed, but with a 

 keen eye, an observant habit, and a generous love of all 

 that ran wild and all that grew free in the face of heaven. 

 They gave their hearts to nature for its own sake ; their 

 lavish interest therein had no ulterior motive ; they 

 accepted the plain unvarnished tale of creation, and were 

 troubled by no problems of evolution, and in their writings 

 their main object was close, accurate, and sympathetic 

 description rather than reasoned and logical explanation. 



Nor can we read the works of the older naturalists 

 without feeling that they were humanists as well. It is 

 true that the more typical humanists of their time 

 regarded their naturalist proclivities in the light of 

 amiable eccentricities, as hobbies with little or no 

 intimate bearing on man, the central figure in all rational 

 and serious study and investigation ; little dreaming of 

 the influence natural history was destined to exercise in 

 their own proper sphere of work. But the naturalists 

 were wiser than they knew ; wiser perhaps than some 

 modern humanists on the one hand, and some modem 

 naturalists on the other. They included man in their 

 field of view. 



Is it too much to say that the connecting Hnk between 

 the old and the new naturalists is to be found in Charles 

 Darwin ? The author of the " Naturalist's Voyage " had 

 received but little systematic training, as we now count 

 systematic training ; he had the keen eye and the 

 observant habit ; he had the generous love for, and 

 sympathy with, nature in all her aspects ; he was indeed 

 an encyclopaedist in his width of interests, which included 

 physical geography and geology as well as the world of 

 plants and animals ; and man was assuredly not absent 

 from his field of view. Is any one likely to question the 

 assertion that Charles Darwin was a great naturalist of 

 the old type ? And after more than twenty years of ex- 

 perimenting, investigating, collecting an enormous mass 

 of data, and thinking of the careful patient type which 

 brilliant little bodies even now fail to appreciate, he gave 

 to the world his " Origin of Species," by which the work of 

 all future naturalists was set in a new light. And after 

 that, did he not write his " Orchids," his " Insectivorous 

 Plants," his " Climbing Plants," his " Earthworms," all 

 of them full of the spirit of the new natural history 1 Had 

 Darwin made another voyage, and had he given us 

 another journal of a naturalist, what we should have 



