19th-century Zoologist Quotes

Oscar Hertwig
Alfred Newton
Ray Lankester
Rudolf Leuckart
Edmund Beecher Wilson
Frank Chapman (ornithologist)
Charles Otis Whitman

To the amoeba, the jelly-fish, or the worm, the "world" is the franchise of an hour in a drop of water; a niche in the rocks for a season; or a home in the sea for a decade. To man, the "world" is the universal whole of time and space, for their content are his to explore and to utilize. And therein lies our measure of freedom and attainment.

Among all the marvels of coloration which the animals of the deep sea exhibited to us nothing be even distantly compared with the hues of these [internal] organs [of the Thaumatolampus diadema ]. One would think that the body was adorned with a diadem of brilliant gems.

Mankind delights in a mystery of whatever sort, that thrill of something unknown to be discovered. For long years the migration of birds has stood as a delightful and mysterious riddle of Nature, but now bids fair to clear away and unfold more wonderful things than we dreamed of.

So long as we insist on regarding biology as a crystallized creed, requiring no more than a possible rectification of some of its tenets, so long shall we continue groping in the dark to get an insight into the mysteries we are professedly trying to solve.

The bluebird is well named, for he wears a coat of the purest, richest, and most gorgeous blue on back, wings, and tail; no North American bird better deserves the name, for no other flashes before our admiring eyes so much brilliant blue.

Arthur Cleveland Bent
Arthur Cleveland Bent
The physical sciences deal with the external world, and in the laboratory we study the structure and activities of organisms by very similar methods; but if we stop here, neglecting the relation of the living being to its environment, our study is not biology or the science of life.

Not only do our memories sometimes deceive us, but we really see nothing with exactness until we attempt to describe it.

Frank Chapman (ornithologist)
Frank Chapman (ornithologist)
Bold Sea-mew — you whose soaring flight Inspires my envious Muse — Pray, with this compliment polite My liberty excuse.

Walter Garstang
Walter Garstang
Birds have no need to lurk hidden in dens, or to slink from place to place under the shelter of the inequalities of the ground or of the vegetation which clothes it, as is the case with some many animals of similar size.

Alfred Newton
Alfred Newton
Nature, it has been said, gives no reply to a general inquiry - she must be interrogated by questions which already contain the answer she is to give; in other words, the observer can only observe that which he is led by hypothesis to look for: the experimenter can only obtain the result which his experiment is designed to obtain.

Ray Lankester
Ray Lankester
Other things being equal, the investigator is always the best instructor. The highest grade of instruction in any science can only be furnished by one who is thoroughly imbued with the scientific spirit, and who is actually engaged in original work.

Charles Otis Whitman
Charles Otis Whitman
The time may come when there will be no portion of the earth's surface that has not been surveyed and explored by man.

No man has a right, either moral or legal, to destroy or squander an inheritance of his children that he holds for them in trust. And man, the wasteful and greedy spendthrift that he is, has not created even the humblest of the species of birds, mammals and fishes that adorn and enrich this earth.

Widely dispersed knowledge concerning the important role of basic cooperative processes among living beings may lead to the acceptance of cooperation as a guiding principle both in social theory and as a basis for human behavior. Such a development when it occurs will alter the course of human history.

The cell, this elementary keystone of living nature, is far from being a peculiar chemical giant molecule or even a living protein and as such is not likely to fall prey to the field of an advanced chemistry. The cell is itself an organism, constituted of many small units of life.

Oscar Hertwig
Oscar Hertwig
They are so plump that you feel inclined to pat them, only they are too small.

Arthur Shipley
Arthur Shipley
Perhaps it is not amiss to remark that the biologist may not hope to solve the ultimate problems of life any more than the chemist and physicist may hope to penetrate the final mysteries of existence in the non-living world.

Edmund Beecher Wilson
Edmund Beecher Wilson
Nowhere is it more true that "prevention is better than cure," than in the case of Parasitic Diseases.

Rudolf Leuckart
Rudolf Leuckart
The whole aim of comparative anatomy is to discover what structures are homologous.

Libbie Hyman
Libbie Hyman