5474 Zoology: its present Phasis 



did not deem it beneath his dignity to compose a history of animals. 

 In what odour Zoology, properly so called, stood with his countrymen, 

 we do not, for certain, know ; but of this we are sure, that during the 

 entire period of Roman dominancy Zoology was of no repute. Yet 

 even then, when, instead of Zoological Gardens and Museums of Na- 

 tural History, gladiatorial exhibitions, in which brute man opposed 

 to brute beast on their way to the charnel-house, formed the delight 

 of a Nature-despising population, there were to be found a few simple- 

 minded men, who thought it worth while to note what Nature, in some 

 of her unintelligible freaks, had placed on earth in an animal form, 

 in addition to man, oxen, horses, pigs and sheep, — these being clearly 

 all or nearly all that are really useful in animal life to him. Persons 

 there were even then, no doubt, curiously observant of what mankind 

 in the mass very naturally and very properly despises. Such were to 

 be found, also, at work — and this, considering the form of humanity 

 which then prevailed, seems almost incredible — during the middle or 

 dark ages, the most terrible period, seemingly 3 of human existence, 

 when feudalite and Ueredite had done their best and their worst to 

 debase human nature, by depriving man of all his natural rights, — 

 feudalite and heredite, those terrible instruments of evil, those impla- 

 cable scourges of humanity, and of which we have still, unhappily, a 

 large sprinkling even in England, raged at this period over Europe, 

 extinguishing the rights of man and his claims to be treated as a hu- 

 man being. Yet even then a few naturalists were to be found, even 

 in practical England, where they were naturally and have ever been 

 held in the highest contempt. At last two men appeared whose 

 genius rescued this humblest of the sciences of observation from its 

 degraded and debased condition, restoring it to that position amongst 

 the Sciences in which Aristotle first placed it. These great men were 

 Carl Linne and the Count de Buffon. But this was all they effected; 

 and Natural History (we allude more especially to Zoology) was fast 

 lapsing into its pristine, anecdotic, puerile, harmless condition, when 

 a genius appeared, destined to revolutionize not merely Zoology, but 

 the human mind itself. That man was George Cuvier, an anatomist. 

 He it was who formed an era not merely in Zoology, but in human 

 history. From that moment Zoology, removed from the school-book 

 and from the pleasant story-telling gossips about " my first tiger" and 

 " my last serpent," became a fitting study, and a difficult one, too, 

 for the deepest thinkers of the day. Whilst Cuvier lived the phasis 

 of Zoology was wholly and thoroughly scientific ; his vast reputation 

 and unbounded influence prevented all inroads upon it ; the wit of the 



