50 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 



catalogues of living species, or to those who are 

 adding to them daily. We ought, however, strenu- 

 ously to avoid the grave error of reducing zoology to 

 the standard of a mere appraiser's craft. He who 

 knows nothing of an animal beyond the name and 

 place apportioned to it in a more or less well devised 

 system of nomenclature, no more deserves the title of 

 a naturalist than a librarian's assistant deserves the 

 name of savant, because he knows by heart the titles 

 of all his books, and their local and numerical 

 arrangement in the press in which they are kept. 

 No ! in the case either of a book or of an animal we 

 must go deeper >han the binding, we must penetrate 

 below the skin. True zoology, or that form of it 

 towards which all other branches of natural science 

 ought to converge, consists in studying the relations 

 of organised beings and their connexion with the in- 

 organic world, in investigating the play of the organs 

 as animated instruments of these mysterious affinities ; 

 in penetrating into their mechanism ; in following 

 them in their modifications, in order to distinguish, 

 if possible, between what is essential and what is 

 incidental ; in ascending from all these effects to the 

 cause, and thus perhaps penetrating at some future 

 day into the arcana of life ; this is the end and aim 

 of true zoology, the rest merely constitute the means. 

 Without, therefore, neglecting new species be- 

 longing to known genera, I was far from seeking for 

 them. My principal object was to make anatomical 

 and physiological observations ; and investigations of 

 this nature certainly do not lose any of their value 

 by being pursued in reference to some already named 



