The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862

Various

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• Publié par: faeb
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 35
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862, by Various This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 Author: Various Release Date: November 2, 2004 [EBook #13924] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY *** Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Barbara Tozier and PG Distributed Proofreaders. Produced from Page Scans Provided by Cornell University. THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY. A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS. VOLUME IX. M DCCC LXII. CONTENTS Underlined titles are in this issue CONTENTS. A.C., The Experiences of the, Agnes of Sorrento, American Civilization, Author of “Charles Auchester,” The, Autobiographical Sketches of a Strength-Seeker, Childhood, Concerning the Sorrows of, Clough, Arthur Hugh, Cooper, James Fenimore, Ease in Work, ISSUE. 52. 51, 52, 53, 54. 54. 56. 51. 53. 54. 51. 52. Forester, The, 54. Fremont’s Hundred Days in Missouri, 51, 52, 53. Fruits of Free Labor in the Smaller Islands of the British West Indies, 53. German Burns, The, Health of Our Girls, The, Hindrance, Horrors of San Domingo, The, Individuality, Jefferson and Slavery, 54. 56. 55. 56. 54. 51. John Lamar, Letter to a Young Contributor, Light Literature, Love and Skates, Man under Sealed Orders, Methods of Study in Natural History, My Garden, Old Age, Our Artists in Italy, Père Antoine’s Date-Palm, Pilgrimage to Old Boston, Raft that no Man made, A, Richelieu, The Statesmanship of, Rifle, The Use of the, Saltpetre as a Source of Power, Sam Adams Regiments in the Town of Boston, The, Slavery, in its Principles, Development, and Expedients, Snow, “Solid Operations in Virginia”, South Breaker, The, Spain, The Rehabilitation of, Spirits, Story of To-Day, A, Taxation, Then and Now in the Old Dominion, Walking, War and Literature, Weather in War, What shall We do with Them?, 54. 54. 51. 51, 52. 55. 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56. 55. 51. 52. 56. 51. 53. 55. 53. 55. 56. 55. 52. 56. 55, 56. 53. 55. 51, 52, 53. 53. 54. 56. 56. 55. 54. POETRY. Astraea at the Capitol, At Port Royal, 1861, Battle-Hymn of the Republic, Birdofredum Sawin, Esq., to Mr. Hosea Biglow, Compensation, Exodus, Lines written under a Portrait of Theodore Winthrop, Lyrics of the Street, Mason and Slidell: A Yankee Idyl, Message of Jeff Davis in Secret Session, A, Midwinter, Mountain Pictures, Order for a Picture, An, Out of the Body to God, Per Tenebras, Lumina, 56. 52. 52. 51, 53. 54. 54. 55. 55. 52. 54. 52. 53, 54. 56. 56. 51. Sonnet, Southern Cross, The, Speech of Hon’ble Preserved Doe in Secret Caucus, Strasburg Clock, The, Sunthin’ in the Pastoral Line, Titmouse, The, True Heroine, The, Under the Snow, Volunteer, The, Voyage of the Good Ship Union, 56. 53. 55. 54. 56. 55. 51. 55. 55. 53. REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES. Arnold’s Lectures on translating Homer, 51. Book about Doctors, A, 54. Botta’s Discourse on the Life, Character, and Policy of Count Cavour, 55. Cloister and the Hearth, The, De Vere, Aubrey, Poems by, Dickens’s Works, Household Edition, Harris’s Insects Injurious to Vegetation, John Brent, Leigh Hunt, Correspondence of, Lessons in Life, Müller’s Lectures on the Science of Language, Newman’s Homeric Translation in Theory and in Practice, Pauli’s Pictures of Old England, Record of an Obscure Man, Tragedy of Errors, Willmott’s English Sacred Poetry, 52. 54. 55. 55. 54. 55. 52. 51. 51. 55. 55. 55. 52. 54, 55. 51. 52, 53, 54, 55. FOREIGN LITERATURE, OBITUARY, RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS, THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY. A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS. VOL. IX.—JANUARY, 1862.—NO. LI. METHODS OF STUDY IN NATURAL HISTORY. I. It is my intention, in this series of papers, to give the history of the progress in Natural History from the beginning,—to show how men first approached Nature,—how the facts of Natural History have been accumulated, and how those facts have been converted into science. In so doing, I shall present the methods employed in Natural History on a wider scale and with broader generalizations than if I limited myself to the study as it exists to-day. The history of humanity, in its efforts to understand the Creation, resembles the development of any individual mind engaged in the same direction. It has its infancy, with the first recognition of surrounding objects; and, indeed, the early observers seem to us like children in their first attempts to understand the world in which they live. But these efforts, that appear childish to us now, were the first steps in that field of knowledge which is so extensive that all our progress seems only to show us how much is left to do. Aristotle is the representative of the learning of antiquity in Natural Science. The great mind of Greece in his day, and a leader in all the intellectual culture of his time, he was especially a naturalist, and his work on Natural History is a record not only of his own investigations, but of all preceding study in this department. It is evident that even then much had been done, and, in allusion to certain peculiarities of the human frame, which he does not describe in full, he refers his readers to familiar works, saying, that illustrations in point may be found in anatomical text-books.1 Strange that in Aristotle’s day, two thousand years ago, such books should have been in general use, and that in our time we are still in want of elementary text-books of Natural History, having special reference to the animals of our own country, and adapted to the use of schools. One fact in Aristotle’s “History of Animals” is very striking, and makes it difficult for us to understand much of its contents. It never occurs to him that a time may come when the Greek language—the language of all culture and science in his time—would not be the language of all cultivated men. He took, therefore, little pains to characterize the animals he alludes to, otherwise than by their current names; and of his descriptions of their habits and peculiarities, much is lost upon us from their local character and expression. There is also a total absence of systematic form, of any classification or framework to express the divisions of the animal kingdom into larger or lesser groups. His only divisions are genera and species: classes, orders, and families, as we understand them now, are quite foreign to the Greek conception of the animal kingdom. Fishes and birds, for instance, they considered as genera, and their different representatives