As the marvellous interdependence of all
natural objects and forces unfolds itself more and more, so the once
separate sciences, which treated of different classes of natural
objects, are forced to interpenetrate, as it were; and to supplement
themselves by knowledge borrowed from each other. Thus--to give a
single instance--no man can now be a first-rate botanist unless he
be also no mean meteorologist, no mean geologist, and--as Mr. Darwin
has shown in his extraordinary discoveries about the fertilisation
of plants by insects--no mean entomologist likewise.
It is difficult, therefore, and indeed somewhat unwise and unfair,
to put any limit to the term Natural History, save that it shall
deal only with nature and with matter; and shall not pretend--as
some would have it to do just now--to go out of its own sphere to
meddle with moral and spiritual matters. But, for practical
purposes, we may define the natural history of the causes which have
made it what it is, and filled it with the natural objects which it
holds. And if any one would know how to study the natural history
of any given spot as the history of the causes which have made it
what it is, and filled it with the natural objects which it holds.
And if any one would know how to study the natural history of a
place, and how to write it, let him read--and if he has read its
delightful pages in youth, read once again--that hitherto unrivalled
little monograph, White's "Natural History of Selborne;" and let him
then try, by the light of improved science, to do for any district
where he may be stationed, what White did for Selborne nearly one
hundred years ago.
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