splendid achievement, the "Systema Naturae." The subjects they deal
with are spoken of as "Natural History," and they called themselves and
were called "Naturalists." But you will observe that this was not the
original meaning of these terms; but that they had, by this time,
acquired a signification widely different from that which they
possessed primitively.

The sense in which "Natural History" was used at the time I am now
speaking of has, to a certain extent, endured to the present day. There
are now in existence in some of our northern universities, chairs of
"Civil and Natural History," in which "Natural History" is used to
indicate exactly what Hobbes and Bacon meant by that term. The unhappy
incumbent of the chair of Natural History is, or was, supposed to cover
the whole ground of geology, mineralogy, and zoology, perhaps even
botany, in his lectures.

But as science made the marvellous progress which it did make at the
latter end of the last and the beginning of the present century,
thinking men began to discern that under this title of "Natural
History" there were included very heterogeneous constituents--that, for
example, geology and mineralogy were, in many respects, widely
different from botany and zoology; that a man might obtain an extensive
knowledge of the structure and functions of plants and animals, without
having need to enter upon the study of geology or mineralogy, and
_vice versa_; and, further as knowledge advanced, it became clear
that there was a great analogy, a very close alliance, between those
two sciences, of botany and zoology which deal with human beings, while
they are much more widely separated from all other studies. It is due
to Buffon to remark that he clearly recognised this great fact. He
says: "Ces deux genres d'etres organises [les animaux et les vegetaux]