There is no little difficulty in obtaining correct and reliable life histories of most of the greatest naturalists. Many of the men to whom natural history science owes so much, lived extremely retired and uneventful lives; but a few, and as might have been anticipated, the reformers and epoch makers of their respective sciences, have had their most interesting biographies well written. Abstracts of these biographies form a large portion of this book; and the author desires to acknowledge the ve

Most of us, on leaving school or college, are anxious about our future career in the world, and concerning how we are to live, and what will be our occupations. Some young people who have finished their education, find themselves in comfortable circumstances, and are apt to look forward to an easy life; but the majority have a hard struggle before them, ere they can hope to be free from cares and to be successful. Yet it usually happens, that those youths starting with the very best prospects, d

Everybody likes to gather flowers for the sake of their beauty and scent, and most young people ask the names and the uses of the plants which grow them. These appear to have been the questions that the earliest races of men sought to answer for themselves. They gave plants names, and ascribed some truthful and a great many very curious and false properties to them. Many of the first races of men lived on fruits, vegetables, and roots, and it became important to know good and nourishing plants f

The world went to sleep for many centuries, so far as natural history and many other things are concerned, after the time of Pliny, and sixteen hundred years elapsed before any advance was made in botanical knowledge. This was the age when the only light on the earth was struggling Christianity, and it was shaded by superstition and violence. At last men began to learn Greek again, and to read the ancient authors carefully, so that nature began to be studied. A few foreign botanists began to att

Carl Linnæus was born in the month of May, 1707, at Rashult, in the parish of Stenbrohult, in Smaland, a province in the South of Sweden. His father, Nils Linnæus, was assistant minister of the parish, and became, in process of time, its pastor or rector, having married the daughter of his predecessor. [1] Our Carl was the firstborn child of this marriage. The family of Linnæus had been peasants, and a remarkably lofty linden tree, growing near their native place, is reputed to have given origin

Linnæus had many difficulties to contend with, however. He found his old rival, Rosen, at work; and Linnæus accuses this man of the meanness of obtaining, partly by entreaty, partly by threats, his manuscript lectures on botany, which he valued more than anything he possessed, and which he afterwards detected his rival in copying. This formidable enemy next proceeded to prevent Linnæus from obtaining the means of subsistence. There was no room for the young botanist at Upsala, and, indeed, botan

There is a name which is very familiar to young and old botanists nowadays, and which is always mentioned with feelings of great respect. It is that of M. de Candolle, one of the founders of the modern system of the classification of plants which is used by everybody now in preference to the celebrated artificial method taught by Linnæus. Augustin Pyramus de Candolle was born at Geneva, in February, 1778, and his father, M. Augustine de Candolle, was descended from one of the oldest families of

Zoology does for animals what botany does for plants. It is the science which treats of the resemblances and differences of animals, their shapes, and habits, and which explains their position on the earth in different countries, and classifies them. It is inseparably linked on to the study of comparative anatomy and to physiology which treats of the internal structures and the influence which the outside world has upon the living thing. Like botany, the science arose in a simple manner, and men

If natural history had never been studied in an easy manner, and had not the results of those studies been given to educated men desirous of knowing something about animals in popular yet correct works, very few men would have cared to become zoologists. It is the good, easy, popular, but not necessarily jocular book on natural history that, as a rule, excites the attention of the young, and stimulates the youth to obtain further knowledge. Such books were written at a very interesting time of t

George Léopold Chretien Fréderic Dagobert Cuvier was born at Montbéliard, in the Department du Doubs, a town which was subsequently united to France, although at the time of Cuvier’s birth it belonged to the kingdom of Wurtemberg. He was born on August 23rd, 1769. His family originally came from a village in the Jura mountains, which still bears the name of Cuvier; but, becoming the victims of religious persecution, they were obliged to leave and to go to reside at Montbéliard at the time of the

As was the case in the other branches of natural history already noticed, the Greeks knew much more about geology than did the nations of the rest of Europe, subsequently, for nearly seventeen hundred years. The first recorded teacher of the ancient history of the earth was Pythagoras, who was born on the island of Samos, about the year 570 B.C. By his mother’s side he was connected with the principal families of the island, and his father appears to have been a Phœnician or a Tyrrhenian of Lemn

Many facts had been recorded regarding the ancient history of the earth, and a host of ideas, more or less absurd, had been given forth on geology, during the years which preceded and followed the reformation. Several Italian geologists had examined into the truths discovered by Pythagoras, and, as stated in the preceding pages, the nature of fossils had become understood by a few liberal minded men. The age of Newton, and the years which followed his time, were consumed, however, so far as the

The ancestors of William Smith were a race of farmers who owned small tracts of land, and had been settled in Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire for many generations. William Smith was born at Churchill, a village in Oxfordshire, on the 23rd of March, 1769, the year which gave birth to Cuvier. Of his parents he always spoke with great regard, but there is little in the recollections which he has preserved of them, to show in what degree they contributed to form his remarkable character. His father

Roderick Impey Murchison was the descendant of a very old Rossshire family, who were great supporters of the Stuarts in the wild western country of the north of Scotland. His great-grandfather fell at Sheriffmuir, and his grandfather, a tenant farmer, had to struggle with slender means during a long life. But long before this fine old man died, at the age of ninety-nine, he saw the fortunes of his family retrieved by his eldest son, whom he outlived. This son, Roderick Impey Murchison’s father,

Charles Lyell was born in Forfarshire, at Kinnordy, on November 14th, 1797. His father was an able, wealthy, well-educated gentleman; and his mother, a Yorkshire lady, had the usual good sound sense of the women of that county. He was the eldest of ten children, the whole of whom grew up; and he, as is commonly the case in large families, was a good son and brother, and a most independent man in mind and action. Charles Lyell’s family resided, for years, in the south of England after his birth,

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