The Old and New Naturalists

Abstract

NATURALISTS, like the animals and plants of which they discourse, are subject to the process of evolution. The naturalist of the latter end of the nineteenth century is not quite the same species as that which bore the name at the end of the eighteenth. Differentiation has been at work. So markedly indeed is this the case, that one is tempted to ask whether the species, as such, is not well-nigh extinct. To-day there are biologists, comparative anatomists and physiologists, systematic botanists and systematic zoologists, palaeontologists and embryologists. But where is the naturalist? Has he not been swallowed up by and distributed among his poly-ological progeny? And yet the word is still in use, and carries with it a more or less specialised implication. The other day a friend, who was discussing with me the work of an acquaintance, said: “He's a capital anatomist; it's a pity he's not more of a naturalist”; and I had no difficulty in catching his meaning. It may be worth while to consider the relative position and status of the old and of the new naturalist.