292 THE HISTORY AXD SCOPE OF ZOOLOGY IX 



series of ardent lovers of nature, who in each succeed- 

 ing period have more and more carefully and accurately 

 tested, proved, arranged, and tabulated their know- 

 ledge, until at last the accumulated lore of centuries 

 — without the conscious act of its latest heirs and 

 cultivators — took the form of the doctrine of descent 

 and the filiation of the animal series. 



General Historical Sketch 



There is something almost pathetic in the childish 

 wonder and delight with which mankind in its earlier 

 phases of civilisation gathered wp and treasured stories 

 of strange animals from distant lands or deep seas, 

 such as are recorded in the Physiologus, in Albertus 

 Magnus, and even at the present day in the popular 

 treatises of Japan and China. That omnivorous uni- 

 versally credulous stage, which may be called the 

 "legendary," was succeeded by the age of collectors 

 and travellers, when many of the strange stories be- 

 lieved in were actually demonstrated as true by the 

 living or preserved trophies brought to Europe by 

 adventurous navigators. The possibility of verifica- 

 tion established verification as a habit ; and the 

 collecting of things, instead of the accumulating of 

 reports, developed a new faculty of minute observa- 

 tion. The early collectors of natural curiosities were 

 the founders of zoological science, and to this day the 

 naturalist-traveller and his correlative, the museum 

 curator and systematist, play a most important part 

 in the progress of Zoology. Indeed, the historical and 

 present importance of this aspect or branch of zoolo- 



