266 ON THE STUDY OF BIOLOGY x 



those phenomena which were not, at that time, 

 susceptible of mathematical or experimental treat- 

 ment ; that is to say, those phenomena of nature 

 which come now under the general heads of physi- 

 cal geography, geology, mineralogy, the history 

 of plants, and the history of animals. It was in 

 this sense that the term was understood by the 

 great writers of the middle of the last century 

 Buffon and Linnaeus by Buffon in his great 

 work, the " Histoire Naturelle Generale," and by 

 Linnaeus in his splendid achievement, the "Systema 

 Naturae." The subjects they deal with are spoken 

 of as " Natural History," and they called them- 

 selves and were called " Naturalists." But you 

 will observe that this was not the original meaning 

 of these terms ; but that they had, by this time, 

 acquired a signification widely different from that 

 which they possessed primitively. 



The sense in which " Natural History " was used 

 at the time I am now speaking of has, to a 

 certain extent, endured to the present day. 

 There are now in existence in some of our 

 northern universities, chairs of " Civil and 

 Natural History," in which " Natural History" is 

 used to indicate exactly what Hobbes and Bacon 

 meant by that term. The unhappy incumbent of 

 the chair of Natural History is, or was, supposed 

 to cover the whole ground of geology, mineralogy, 

 and zoology, perhaps even botany, in his lectures. 



But as science made the marvellous progress 



