NATURAL HISTORY IN ANECDOTE. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Boienoe. Science is classified truth. Men study the heavenly 

 bodies, note their characteristics, observe their movements, and 

 define their relationships; and having verified their deduc- 

 tions by repeated experiments, arrange the truths they have 

 discovered into systems, and by classifying their knowledge 

 reduce it to a science: this science they call Astronomy. 

 Astronomy is thus the classified arrangement of all known 

 truths concerning the heavenly bodies. Geology, similarly, is 

 the classified arrangement of all known truths concerning the 

 material structure of the Earth. 

 The Kingdoms The Natural World has been variously divided 



ofUatiire. for the purposes of study. Linnaeus divided 

 it into three kingdoms; (I) the Mineral kingdom (II) the 

 Vegetable kingdom and (III) the Animal kingdom, thus 

 naming the three kingdoms in the order of their natural 

 geneses. The Mineral kingdom comprises the inorganic forms 

 of nature, — those which have no organism and which can 

 only increase by external addition. The Vegetable and 

 Animal kingdoms comprise the organic life of nature, — those 

 forms which are provided with means for promoting their 

 own development and propagating species. The Vegetable 

 kingdom, while easily distinguishable from the Mineral 

 kingdom is in some of its forms so similar to the lower 

 forms of animal life as to suggest relationship between the 

 two; while the Animal kingdom, beginning with the lower 

 forms which approximate so closely to vegetable forms. 



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