Volume 1

Curiosities of natural history / by Francis T. Buckland ... First[-fourth] series.

  • Francis Trevelyan Buckland
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Curiosities of natural history / by Francis T. Buckland ... First[-fourth] series. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    opinion that the animal kingdom is not yet ‘ exhausted,’ and with this belief, I have written the following pages. In natural history, as well as in other researches, it is too much the practice to copy facts and observations from printed hooks, the great volume of Nature herself being left unopened. It has been my endeavour to search into this book, and to record facts which came under my own eyes. I have, nevertheless, not hesi- tated to use the eyes of other naturalists, at times and places when it was impossible to use my own. I have plainly marked as quotations all matter which belongs to other persons: should any one recognize any passage unacknowledged, he is requested to re- gard it as an oversight. In the article on Rats will he observed several references to a paper which appeared on the same subject in the Quarterly Review, January 1857. I have thought it right to draw attention to these, that I might not be thought guilty of plagiarism. The article on Rats was published by me in Bentley’s Miscellany, August 1852. Without the knowledge of the structure and phy- siology of the lower members of the animal kingdom, it would be difficult rightly to understand many func- tions of the human • economy; and much light has been thrown upon the art of healing by the study of the lower links of the chain of animal life. I would wish]it, therefore, to be understood, that the following pages have not been written to the neglect of purely professional subjects of investigation. It has been acknowledged by many of our greatest medical men, that Natural History is the handmaid to the study of medicine and surgery; and this is amply proven by the collection made by John Hunter, the immortal founder of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. This great man points out to his followers the necessity of studying comparative as well as human