XIV INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



tions than the natural result of an industry unsurpassed, lay 

 buried in the hall of a corporate body with whom, as a surgeon, 

 he was accidentally associated : but he had laboured in vain. 

 His views 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. Yet he had laboured in vain, 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 which France and 

 Germany had taught me, and which I have continued to 

 meditate and reflect on to the present day. Since that period 

 the educational 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 literature, at least 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 observation, 

 as compared with true science ; that description of knowledge 

 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 



