XX INTRODUCTION. 



science, bordered on regions of the earth surpassed by none for 

 variety in the forms of animal life. I allude to Africa within 

 the tropics. Nearly every animal susceptible of domes- 

 tication and useful to man had been appropriated by the 

 Coptic race of Egypt and Nubia ; whilst all the urilde of 

 nature had in succession been exhibited to the nation in 

 various triumphal processions. But all this was merely prac- 

 tical and transitory. It was the same with Rome, Eastern and 

 Western; nescience resulted from it, no zoological science, at 

 least; and the dawn of civilization which re-opened in Europe 

 after the dreadful period of the Dark and Middle Ages, 

 found zoological and natural science precisely where it was 

 left by Pliny a tissue of puerilities, of vague hypotheses, of 

 silly fancies, upon which no critique had ever been exercised. 



Notwithstanding the occasional appearance of able men, it 

 continued in this sad state until the close of the seventeenth 

 century. Neither zoology nor mineralogy nor geology had 

 any real existence. 



In 1707, or about that period, two men appeared, simulta- 

 neously, destined to rescue Zoology at last from the degraded 

 state to which Pliny and his imitators, abounding most 

 in England, had reduced it. These were Carl Linne and the 

 Count de Buffon. To these truly great men we owe the first 

 attempt to remove the natural sciences from the control of 

 those into whose hands they had fallen. The genius of 

 Linnd led to classification, that of BufFon to description; 

 the one defined, the other described. But the genius of the 

 latter was of a higher cast : it anticipated the future ; and men 

 now read with surprise and learn with astonishment (a sur- 

 prise and astonishment in which I do not partake) that Buffon 

 was no mere compiler, no mere literary man, no mere writer 

 drained to captivate the world by the beauties of a style un- 

 matched, I believe, in France, but a profound philosopher, 

 who had already anticipated nearly all the great truths of the 

 transcendental in science. But neither Buffon nor Linnd, 

 whatever might have been the profundity of their views, 



