VI 
PREFACE. 
sidered as known to naturalists,” it is probably much 
within the mark to assert that ninety thousand are 
‘‘ known ” only in such sort as is described above. 
What should we think if the world were to collect 
from Egypt the tens of thousands of mummies that 
are said to be entombed in the mighty catacombs of 
that country, and having placed them in museums 
should appoint learned men minutely to measure 
their differing features and limbs, to describe their 
appearance with exactitude, and to depict their 
portraits in all the leathery blackness of their phy- 
siognomy ; then to give each a name, and record the 
whole in a book ; — what should we think if the 
world would call this Egyptian History ? 
It is manifest that there is not an iota of History 
in either the one or the other. For History is the 
record of the actions of men, their relations to other 
men, the circumstances in which they acted, their 
characters, the influence of their lives upon society, 
their connexion with the times preceding and follow- 
ing their own, and other points of interest, not one 
of which could be gathered from a description of 
their dead and preserved bodies, though ever so exact 
and minute. So, that alone is worthy to be called 
Natural History, which investigates and records the 
condition of living things, of things in a state of 
nature ; if animals, of living animals : — which tells 
of their ‘‘ sayings and doings,” their varied notes and 
