Natural History
in the widest sense, and as used by the ancients, that branch of knowledge which included all natural science, and had the Cosmos for its subject. In more recent times its range was limited 'to zoölogy; now again, its bounds are extended, and it may be defined as the science which deals with the earth's crust and its productions.
Thus it includes geology, mineralogy, palæobotany, and palæontology, treating respectively of the inorganic world and organic remains of past ages. To these succeed biology, or the science of life, in its widest science (see BIOLOGY). Popularly, natural history is synonymous with ZOOLOGY (q. v.), and some writers of authority use it in that sense.