4 THE INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS. 



anatomy were born and developed ; researches 

 abounded and observers abandoned the field for the 

 laboratory. 



The difference in methods of research and the 

 pushing of precision to its extreme limits — an inevit- 

 able result of the different nature of the observations 

 to be made — did not however yet render legitimate 

 the claim for natural studies to be called " science." 



NaUiral history and the natural sciences. — A 

 more important event has taken place. The 

 ancient naturalists, like their contemporaries, had 

 firm beliefs which they used as unquestionable 

 principles for the comprehension of all facts. The 

 explanation of an observation was ready in advance. 

 The study of facts invariably brought to the pen of 

 the writer the same enthusiastic admiration of the 

 marvellous part played by Providence in nature.^ 

 The phenomena in which this action was not 

 strikingly apparent were merely described without 

 any attempt to relate them with each other, or with 

 the other facts. A hypothesis which left a great 

 number of facts without explanation was necessarily 

 insufficient. The descriptions, in spite of all their 

 individual interest, did not constitute a homogeneous 

 whole, a science. They were merely a collection of 

 more or less natural histories. 



Science only begins on the day when we have 

 found the simple theory which binds together all the 

 facts at that time known, without of course pre- 

 judicing the future. As the number of acquired facts 

 increases, if the theory in question continues to 

 explain the new as it explained the old, the science 



' See, for example, Reaumur, Mhnoires four Vhistoire des Titsectes, 

 t. i., pp. 23-25. 



