XVIll INTRODUCTION. 



1 1 i> v i'ws he placed before the world in the form of a museum, 

 to which none of the labours of men's hands can be compared 

 unless it be, and these no doubt excel, the handiwork of 

 those who carved the Medicean Venus and the Belvidere 

 Apollo. For never, I believe, at any period of its history, 

 was Zoology in a lower condition in Britain than that in 

 which I found it when, returning from France, in the 

 summer of 1825, I submitted to a small but select class an 

 outline of those great views whidh France and Germany had 

 taught me, and which I have continued to meditate and 

 reflect on to the present day. Since that period the educa- 

 tional institutions of the country have become somewhat 

 multiplied, perhaps improved. The pressure of continental 

 opinion has told on Britain, and ere long it is by no means 

 improbable the sciences of simple observation may be deemed, 

 if not equal in importance to those great branches of human 

 knowledge wrapped up in the study of numbers and of lite- 

 rature, at least esteemed useful, practically calculated to 

 expand the intellect the first object of all education. 



It is a matter not only curious in itself, but fraught with 

 interest to the future historian, to trace, however briefly, the 

 gradual unfolding of modern education, as contrasted not 

 merely with the ancient but with that which, even in my 

 younger days, prevailed everywhere. The interest lies chiefly 

 in contrasting the low estimate which prevailed respecting 

 the nature and character of the sciences of simple observa- 

 tion, as compared with true science ; that description of know- 

 ledge which admits of a priori reasoning, from that which 

 scarcely, if at all, admits of such. Hence, no doubt, the 

 exclusion of chemistry, anatomy, natural history, from the 

 curriculum of all universities, schools, colleges, examining 

 bodies. Medicine, an art mistaken for a science, usurped 

 their place, and these branches of knowledge were tacked to 

 medicine furtively, but not mentioned or spoken of aloud. 

 The sciences I speak of were merely permitted to exist under 

 a withered and degraded form ; and a faculty which never 



