INTRODUCTION. 31 



the names of four great cultivators of that science. 

 All knowledge of nature must have commenced in the 

 observation of individuals, or in an intuitive percep- 

 tion of their properties bestowed upon the first man. 

 We may suppose, however, that at some period not 

 remote from the creation of the human race men 

 were left to their own resources, when they w^ere 

 necessarily forced to examine the nature and qua- 

 lities of plants and animals, as well as of all na- 

 tural objects wdth which they came into contact. 

 The son would learn from the father, and impart 

 to his descendants a certain degree of knowledge 

 acquired by observation. Where the art of writing 

 was unknown, science would advance but slowly ; 

 and even where it was practised, the privilege 

 would probably belong to individuals or families^, 

 so that the mass would still be left to their ordi- 

 nary resources. Those who lived in the remote ages 

 antecedent to the Christian era probably knew as 

 much of natural history as the unlettered peasant 

 of our own age and country. Whatever may have 

 been the acquirements of the priests, the sole depo- 

 sitaries of science in ancient India, Chaldea, and 

 Egypt, they perished amid the revolutions of empires. 

 The Sacred Scriptures, however, show that IMoses, 

 who was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, 

 had bestowed considerable attention on the animal 

 world ; but as these writings were not intended for 

 our instruction in natural knowledge, the observa- 

 tions which they contain on the subject have no re- 

 ference to systematic arrangement. In short, what- 

 ever may have been the knowledge possessed by the 

 subjects of the Pharaohs, or the Hebrews and Greeks 

 of the earlier ages, we do not find that it had assumed 



