298 THE HISTORY AND SCOPE OF ZOOLOGY IX 



without restraint ; he hears contradictions only from 

 afar. But in a learned society the enunciation of 

 dogmatic views leads rapidly to their destruction, and 

 the desire of each member to convince the others 

 necessarily leads to the agreement to admit nothing 

 excepting what is the result of observation or of 

 mathematical calculation." 



The first founded of surviving European academies, 

 the Academia Naturse Curiosorum (1651),^ especially 

 confined itself to the description and illustration of 

 the structure of plants and animals ; eleven years later 

 (1662) the Eoyal Society of London was incorporated 

 by royal charter, having existed without a name or 

 fixed organisation for seventeen years previously (from 

 1645). A little later the Academy of Sciences of Paris 

 was established by Louis XIY. The influence of these 

 great academies of the seventeenth century on the 

 progress of Zoology was precisely to efi'ect that bring- 

 ing together of the museum -men and the physicians 

 or anatomists which was needed for further develop- 

 ment. Whilst the race of collectors and systematisers 

 culminated in the latter part of the eighteenth century 

 in Linnaeus, a new type of student made its appearance 

 in such men as John Hunter and other anatomists, 

 who, not satisfied with the superficial observations of 

 the popular " zoologists," set themselves to work to 

 examine anatomically the whole animal kingdom, and 

 to classify its members by aid of the results of such 

 profound study. From them we pass to the compara- 



1 The Academia Secretorum Naturse was founded at Naples in 

 1560, but was suppressed by the ecclesiastical authorities. 



