1 66 Smnnier Studies of Birds and Books chap. 



previous explorers ; how necessary to be continually 

 testing with your own eyes what others have re- 

 corded in books. He would have delighted in the 

 labours of two such men as our countrymen Eay 

 and Willughby, who in the seventeenth century 

 initiated a new era in the study of plants and 

 animals ; and still more would he have rejoiced in 

 the great comprehensive work of Linnaeus in the 

 century which followed, and in the minute and 

 patient observations of White of Selborne. Between 

 Aristotle and Linnaeus, a period of more than two 

 thousand years, there was indeed no great and uni- 

 versal naturalist ; and down to the time of Darwin, 

 these are the two greatest names in the history 

 of natural history. Each of them had a definite 

 function to perform. Aristotle gathered together 

 the current knowledge of his day, and added to it 

 largely by dissections and observations; he first 

 directed attention to the facts and mysteries of 

 animal life. Linnteus' work was classification, a 

 task which could not indeed be then adequately 

 performed as we demand it now, but one which had 

 to be performed in some fashion before further 

 advance could be made. To these two men, more 

 perhaps than to any others, we must look back as 

 the founders and benefactors of all Natural History 

 Societies. 



Aristotle lived in an age when thinking men — 



