12 Pwceedings of the Boy at Physical Society. 



we smile at the outstanding empiricism in the latter, we 

 should remember not only the absence of a true chemistry in 

 those days, but, even more, the prevalent superstitious views of 

 nature, as in herself the nurse and the healer of all who were 

 willing to wait at her door. And, perhaps, apart from the 

 superstition, it would not be unwise, in our time of numberless 

 specifics, to wait trustingly a little more on nature than we do. 

 The ideal Sibbald set before him, on his return from the 

 Continent, may not have been a very high one ; but, such as 

 it was, he realised it. In any circumstances he would not 

 have succeeded in the statement and illustration of principles. 

 His mind was not of this sort. He had a thirst for parti- 

 culars, and his records are perfectly trustworthy, so far as 

 they deal with his own observations ; but a natural bent at 

 least in the direction of credulity, led him too readily to take 

 statements on trust. But it is not necessary to go back to 

 Sibbald's day for men of this type. They are ever at the 

 door. Looking thus to the time, we need not be astonished 

 to find in Sibbald's work, Vespertilio standing, as if a '^true 

 bird, between CaprimulgiLs and Corvus, or cetaceans having a 

 separate group value assigned them under fishes. Yet even 

 here we see juster views appearing, as in all times of transition 

 they do. Thus, having placed the " Ceti,'' he proceeds to tell 

 us that in their leading aspects of structure they rank with 

 quadrupeds — the term mammalia, it should be remembered, 

 did not come into use till the publication of the tenth edition 

 of the "Systema Naturae," 1758, up to which date Linnseus 

 himself ranked the Cetacea under Pisces, — that is, twenty- 

 three years after the first edition of his great work. Yet 

 Sibbald had hinted at their true place sixty-six years pre- 

 viously. In his " Phalainologia," 1692, he says their bones 

 and internal structure are similar to those of terrestrial ani- 

 mals. There is, moreover, a passage in this treatise which 

 shows how far he had broken away from a 'priori methods of 

 study — " Cum antem hae etiam, non solum apud vulgus, sed nee 

 satis Auctores distinguantur, necesse est ut in varia genera 

 suasque species per proprias differentias et notas characteris- 

 ticas distribuantur : Quantum scilicet ex naturae libro (qui 

 unicuique patet et intuenti se ingerit) hoc perspicere licet " — 



