the most modest and the most teachable of men. But even in their
case there can be no harm in going over deliberately a question of
such importance; in putting it, as it were, into shape; and
insisting on arguments which may perhaps not have occurred to some
of them.

Let me, in the first place, reassure those--if any such there be--
who may suppose, from the title of my lecture, that I am only going
to recommend them to collect weeds and butterflies, "rats and mice,
and such small deer." Far from it. The honourable title of Natural
History has, and unwisely, been restricted too much of late years to
the mere study of plants and animals. I desire to restore the words
to their original and proper meaning--the History of Nature; that
is, of all that is born, and grows in time; in short, of all natural
objects.

If any one shall say--By that definition you make not only geology
and chemistry branches of natural history, but meteorology and
astronomy likewise--I cannot deny it. They deal each of them, with
realms of Nature. Geology is, literally, the natural history of
soils and lands; chemistry the natural history of compounds, organic
and inorganic; meteorology the natural history of climates;
astronomy the natural history of planetary and solar bodies. And
more, you cannot now study deeply any branch of what is popularly
called Natural History--that is, plants and animals--without finding
it necessary to learn something, and more and more as you go deeper,
of those very sciences. 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