140 
A SCIENTIFIC APPRECIATION [oh. vi. 
says at the beginning of his Lives of Eminent 
Zoologists (1834):— 
“ Only a few years ago, natural history was 
held in some degree of contempt by the enlightened 
as well as by the ignorant; its cultivators were 
considered as triflers, wasting their energies upon 
that which could profit nothing; and the informa¬ 
tion which it affords was looked upon as unworthy 
of the attention of persons fitted for intellectual 
pursuits.” 
In the preface to his History of the Molluscous 
Animals of Scotland (1843), he notes that it is the 
first zoological work emanating from the University 
of Aberdeen, and goes on to say:— 
“ I cannot but look upon it as indicating the not 
distant dawn of an era, destined, I trust, to produce 
investigations, the importance of which will tend to 
give our city a rank, certainly not yet acquired, 
among those distinguished for the cultivation of 
natural history, the most delightful of all sciences, 
the source of all knowledge, the study best adapted 
to refine our affections, and to bring us continually 
into the presence of our Creator, the maker and 
preserver of us, and all those wonderful objects that 
everywhere present themselves to our view. The 
time is almost gone when a little Latin, a little 
Greek, a little mathematics, a little natural 
philosophy, and a little moral philosophy, in such 
spare quantities as 'one small head could hold/ 
made an accomplished scholar. The book of Nature 
has been opened to us, and whatever profit there 
may be in storing our minds with phrases, it would 
require some ingenuity to show that the knowledge 
of things is not more useful than that of words. 
