VI PREFACE. 



sidered as " known to naturalists," it is probably much 

 within the mark to assert that ninety thousand are 

 " known " only in such sort as is described above. 



What should we think if the world were to collect 

 from Egypt the tens of thousands of mummies that 

 are said to be entombed in the mighty catacombs of 

 that country, and having placed them in museums 

 should appoint learned men minutely to measure 

 their differing features and limbs, to describe tlieir 

 appearance with exactitude, and to depict their 

 portraits in all the leathery blackness of their phy- 

 siognomy ; then to give each a name, and record the 

 whole in a book ; — what should we think if the 

 world would call this Egyptian History ? 



It is manifest that there is not an iota of History 

 in either the one or the other. For History is the 

 record of the actions of men, their relations to other 

 men, the circumstances in which they acted, their 

 characters, the influence of their lives upon society, 

 their connexion with the times preceding and follow- 

 ing their own, and other points of interest, not one 

 of which could be gathered from a description of 

 their dead and preserved bodies, though ever so exact 

 and minute. So, that alone is worthy to be called 

 Natural History, which investigates and records the 

 condition of living things, of things in a state of 

 nature; if animals, of living animals: — which tells 

 of their " sayings and doings," their varied notes and 



