History of biology - L. C. Miall

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Zoology.

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      While the physicians of the Rhineland were describing and figuring their native plants, the study of animals began to revive. Two very different methods of work were tried by the zoologists of the sixteenth century. One set of men, who may be called the Encyclopædic Naturalists, were convinced that books, and especially the books of the ancients, constituted the chief source of information concerning animals and most other things. They extracted whatever they could from Aristotle, Ælian, and Pliny, adding all that was to be learned from the narratives of recent travellers, or from the collectors of skins and shells. The books on which they chiefly depended, being for the most part written by men who had not grappled with practical natural history and its problems, were unfortunately altogether inadequate. Many of the statements brought together by the encyclopædic naturalists were ill-attested; some were even ridiculously improbable. If inferences from the facts were attempted—and this was rare—they were more often propositions of morality or natural theology than the pregnant thoughts which suggest new inquiries. Hence the encyclopædic plan, even when pursued by men of knowledge and capacity, such as Gesner and Aldrovandi, yielded no results proportional to the labour bestowed upon it; the true path of biological progress had been missed. Naturalists of another school described and figured the animals of their own country, or at least animals which they had closely studied. Rondelet described from personal observation the fishes of the Mediterranean; Belon described the fishes and birds that he had met with in France and the Levant. His Book of Birds (1555) is a folio volume in which some two hundred species are described and figured. The "naturel" (natural history of the species) contains many curious observations. Perhaps the best things in the book are two figures placed opposite one another and lettered in correspondence; one shows the skeleton of a bird, the other that of a man. The example of Rondelet and Belon was followed by other zoological monographers, who did more for zoology than all the learning of the encyclopædists.

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      Simple-minded people, who do not feel the need of precision in matters of natural history, have in all ages divided animals into four-footed beasts which walk on the earth, birds which fly, fishes which swim, and perhaps reptiles which creep. This is the classification found in the Babylonian and Hebrew narratives of the great flood. Plants they naturally divide into trees and herbs. It was not very long, however, before close observers became discontented with so simple a grouping. They discovered that the bat is no bird, though it flies; that the whale is no fish, though it swims; that the snake comes nearer in all essentials to the four-footed lizard, and even to the beast of the field, than to the creeping earthworm. At a much later time they discovered that pod-bearing or rose-like herbs may resemble pod-bearing or rose-like trees more closely than all trees resemble each other. Moreover, a multitude of animals became known which cannot be classed as either beasts, birds, fishes, or reptiles, and a multitude of plants which cannot be classed as either trees or herbs.

      Bird's Skeleton.

       For comparison with human skeleton (opposite), lettered to show the answerable bones. From Belon's Book of Birds, 1555.

      Human Skeleton.

       For comparison with bird's skeleton (opposite), lettered to show the answerable bones. From Belon's Book of Birds, 1555.

      

      Aristotle found himself obliged to rectify the traditional classification of animals in order to remove gross anomalies. When learning decayed the traditional classification came back. Thus the Ortus Sanitatis (first published in 1475, and often reprinted) adopts the division into (1) animals and things which creep on the earth; (2) birds and things which fly; (3) fishes and things which swim. No consistent primary division of plants was proposed by Greek or Roman, nor by anyone else until the seventeenth century A.D.

      A tolerable outline of a classification of animals was attained much earlier than a tolerable classification of plants. The characters available for the classification of plants are, to begin with, less obvious than those which the zoologist can employ. Moreover, the botanists were restricted to a narrower view of their subject. Zoologists, though they were expected to bestow the best part of their time upon vertebrates, were encouraged to study all animals more or less. Botanists, on the other hand, were practically obliged to concentrate their attention upon the classification of the flowering plants. The physician, herb-collector, and gardener cared nothing about any plants except such as bear flowers and fruit; but of these they expected full descriptions, and were clamorous for a system which would enable even a tyro to make out every species with certainty and ease. The task set before the botanist was comparable in respect of difficulty with the construction of a detailed and completely satisfactory classification of birds, which zoology has never yet been able to produce, while for the sake of this long-unattainable object almost everything else in botany was neglected.

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      During the greater part of three centuries (1300 to 1600), while the revival of learning and science was proceeding actively in Italy, France, Switzerland, and the Rhineland, England lagged behind. Humanist studies were indeed pursued with eminent success in the England of Sir Thomas More, but there was little else for national pride to dwell upon. The re-opening of ancient literature, the outpouring of printed books, the Reformation, the new mathematics and astronomy, the new botany and zoology, were mainly the work of foreigners. Before the seventeenth century no Englishman was recognised as the founder of a scientific school.

      

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