INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. XIX 



these combined voyages there was nascent the idea of co-operative 

 expeditions, of which the greatest has been that of the Challenger. 



In illustration of travellers who were not specialists, but in 

 varying degrees widely interested naturalists, it will be sufficient to 

 cite three names Thomas Pennant, Peter Pallas, and, greatest of all, 

 Alexander von Humboldt. 



Of Thomas Pennant (1726-1798) we may note that he was one 

 of the early travellers in Scotland, which was then, as he says, 

 almost as unknown as Kamchatka, and that he extorted from Dr. 

 Johnson the admission, " He 's a Whig, sir, a sad dog; but he 's the 

 best traveller I ever read; he observes more things than any one 

 else does ". He knew Buffon and corresponded with Linnaeus, and 

 was the author of several works on British and North American 

 zoology. His so-called Arctic Zoology is mainly a sketch of the 

 fauna in the northern regions of North America, begun " when the 

 empire of Great Britain was entire, and possessed the northern part 

 of the New World with envied splendour". His perspective is 

 excellent! the botanist, the fossilist, the historian, the geographer 

 must, he says, accompany him on his zoological tours, " to trace the 

 gradual increase of the animal world from the scanty pittance given 

 to the rocks of Spitzbergen to the swarms of beings which enliven 

 the vegetating plains of Senegal; to point out the causes of the 

 local niggardness of certain places, and the prodigious plenty in 

 others ". It was about the same time (1777) that E. A. W. Zimmer- 

 mann, Professor of Mathematics at Brunswick, published a quarto 

 in Latin, entitled Specimen Zoologice Geographicce Quadrupedum, 

 " with a most curious map ", says Pennant, " in which is given the 

 name of every animal in its proper climate, so that a view of the 

 whole quadruped creation is placed before one's eyes, in a manner 

 perfectly new and instructive". It was wonderful then, but the 

 map in question looks commonplace enough nowadays. 



Peter Simon Pallas (1741-1811) was a student of medicine and 

 natural science, and did good work as a systematic and anatomical 

 zoologist. He was the first, we believe, to express the relationships 

 of animals in a genealogical tree, but his interest for us here lies in 

 his zoological exploration of Russia and Siberia, the results of which 



