Natural History, in its widest and oldest sense, includes all the concrete sciences, but psychology and sociology have been separated off at the one end of the series, physics and chemistry and all their branches at the other, so that natural history became synonymous with the science of living things. Most frequently, however, it simply means zoology, especially in so far as that is concerned with the life and habits of animals. See BIOLOGY, BOTANY, EVOLUTION, SCIENCE, ZOOLOGY.
Natural History,
Chambers's Encyclopaedia, Volume 7: Maltebrun to Pearson, p. 407
Source scan(s): p. 0416