A WEEKLY ILLUSTRATED JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



" To the solid ground 

 Of Nature trusts the mind which builds for aye." — Wordsworth. 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1912. 



EARLY NATURALISTS. 

 The Early Xaturalists. Their Lives and Work 

 ( 1 530-1789). By Dr. L. C. Miall, F.R.S. 

 Pp. xi + 396. (London: Macmillan and Co., 

 Ltd., 1912.) Price io.<;. net. 



IN this account of the naturaUsts who worked 

 and wrote during- the period between the com- 

 mencement of the Protestant Reformation and 

 that of the French Revolution, Prof. Miall has 

 placed under a considerable oblig^ation those who 

 are interested in the advancement of natural know- 

 ledge. The period to which the work is in the 

 main limited constitutes perhaps as natural an 

 epoch as may be found in human history. Whether 

 the period be natural or not, the charming 

 introductory sketch of "Natural Historj- down 

 to the Sixteenth Century " fully justifies the selec- 

 tion of the date at which the author's account of 

 scientific progress formally opens, while the closing 

 date adopted is at least convenient. But the work 

 is one that could only have been written with 

 unusually full knowledge of the scientific happen- 

 ings since the date of Buffon's death, and it is 

 owing to the possession of this knowledge that 

 the author has been able to assess so authorita- 

 tively as he does the extent and the value of the 

 permanent additions to biological truth which 

 marked the period he passes under review. 



The work, in the main, deals, as its title implies, 

 with the lives and the lalx>urs of the naturalists 

 who flourished during the period in question. In 

 his treatment of the subject Professor Miall strikes 

 a happy mean between the methods of the skilled 

 biographer and of the formal historian of human 

 progress. .\s a result, he succeeds in enabling 

 the reader to acquire a clear conception not only 

 NO. 2236, VOL. 90] 



of what was accomplished during the period, but 

 of the character of those by whom the work was 

 done and of the intellectual atmosphere in which 

 they lived. To the personal interest thus aroused 

 is largely due the force of the incisive estimates 

 provided by the author of men like Clusius and 

 Belon, Ray and Leeuwenhoek, Reaumur and 

 Buffon, to mention only a few of the worthies 

 whose lives are discussed. Even in those rare in- 

 stances in which the reader may feel inclined to 

 differ from Prof. Miall, it will be admitted that his 

 estimates are the result of complete knowledge and 

 judicial thought ; any disinclination to accept the 

 verdicts depends not on the facts, but on the 

 point of view from which these facts are regarded. 



There Is, however, a certain want of unity in 

 the work. In addition to the accounts of in- 

 dividual naturalists which we conclude from the 

 title to be its main subject, the book contains a 

 series of essays of a different type, each of them 

 as self-contained as the character-sketches of 

 which the work is principally composed. One of 

 these, already alluded to, aptly serves as an intro- 

 duction to these sketches. Another, on "The 

 Natural History of Distant Lands," is inter- 

 polated between the accounts of the earlier Con- 

 tinental and the earlier English naturalists, but 

 scarcely serves as a connecting link between the 

 one group and the other. This essay is, however, 

 so interesting in itself that one welcomes it as 

 a digression, which at least does not carry us 

 bevond the later limit of the period discussed, and 

 may be excused for taking us back further than 

 its earlier one. 



Two similar essays, equally self-contained, on 

 "The Investigation of the Puss Moth," and on 

 " Early Studies of the Flower," which are not 

 accorded the position of distinct sections, but are 

 incorporated in other sections, deviate more con- 



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