tended thereafter to separate the sciences into the sciences of mathematics and experiment (such as chemistry, astronomy, and physics), whilst the sciences of observation (geology, mineralogy, zoology, and botany) remained to represent the wider "Natural History" of olden days. Buffon and Linnæus wrote their "Natural Histories" under this latter idea, namely, that they professed the study of rocks, fossils, plants, and animals. Further limitation of scientific aims and names was, however, soon necessitated by the increase of knowledge. It was clearly perceived that, as living things, the animals and plants remained more closely connected than did the geological and other branches of natural history. Hence, in due course, a new name crept into use to indicate the sciences which specially select life and living beings as subjects of study. In 1801 Lamarck, the French naturalist, first used the name "Biologie" to indicate the collection of sciences dealing with the manifold relations of animals and plants. There seems to be a faculty in the human mind for acquiring a liking for a name or method which exhibits a special appropriateness in its description of the objects it is destined to describe. And we find that, despite the firm hold which the name "Natural History" had obtained as descriptive of the study of life, it is being gradually superseded by the name "Biology"-in every sense a most appropriate term. Although chiefly in the northern parts of these islands we still cling with a striking proclivity, favoured by a reverence for antiquity, to the name "Natural History," the term "Biology" has already gained a secure hold as a scientific expression. To-day, when we study "Natural History," we should be understood to take the widest possible view of natural things; and we may include in our studies subjects as diverse as the origin of chalk-flints, the anatomy of the brain, the liquefaction of gases, and the fertilisation of flowers. But when we assert that we study "Biology," we thus limit, with some degree of exactness, the objects of research. Then, we take for granted that our studies limit us to the fields of life-to the history of animals and plants-a history which, be it remarked, however, stretches its interests far afield, and relates itself in many and diverse ways to other and even widely separated branches of knowledge.

Thus much may be said by way of introduction to the nature of biological study. In the field before us lie the manifold concerns of the world of life; and it is straining no analogy to assert, with Mr. Herbert Spencer, that "preparation in biology" may after all be the best preliminary for the successful study of the human race, and for the understanding and regulation of its interests, whether regarded as pertaining to the individual, the family, the race, or the nation at large. It is no startling thought that the laws of human life and society can be demonstrated to be founded upon wider laws which prevail in animal life at large, and that the analogies and resemblances betwixt

the ways of humanity and the acts of lower life are too close to admit a doubt of their intimate relationship. Spencer is stating no mythical idea but a solid fact, when he remarks that "the Science of Life yields to the Science of Society certain great generalisations, without which there can be no Science of Society at all." Nor is the statement to be viewed as aught else than reasonable, that "all social actions being determined by the actions of individuals, and all actions of individuals being vital actions that conform to the laws of life at large, a rational interpretation of social actions implies knowledge of the laws of life."

Such a subject, however the connexus between biology and human interests-would require a volume to itself; and at present I merely mention the fact of such relationship to impress the idea that the future of biology will undoubtedly include in its scope much of human affairs that now appears wholly at a distance from the interests of animals and plants at large. Nor have I the intention, at present, of discussing the relations of biology to religion, or of trenching even cursorily upon those modifications in religious opinion and in theological reasoning which, of all the sciences, biology has been most plainly instrumental in inaugurating and fostering. At present, therefore, we may simply endeavour to discover how biology is to be studied, to what that study leads, and the nature and direction of the paths wherein the modern biologist pursues his research. If, according to Spencer, "preparation in biology" is the great necessity for a true knowledge of the laws which govern human society, so, for us, preparation in the methods of the science of life is a needful preliminary for an understanding of the influence which modern biology has exerted upon men's ideas concerning the order and origin of living nature.

The study of the standpoints of biology may be fitly commenced by a reference to the manner in which the investigations of the biologist into the history of animals and plants are carried on. It is the province of science to be exact; it is the first and highest duty of its professors to secure correctness in their methods of discovering facts. In science we are not at liberty to begin anywhere, as, in truth, our researches, if pursued completely, will terminate in a definite fashion. Organised method is, in short, the great essential for scientific success in the pursuit and discovery of truth; and it is in his adoption of such methods that the scientific investigator differs most notably from the student in many other departments of thought. We may note in passing that another and equally important characteristic of scientific investigation exists in the fact that, having no prejudices to defend or prepossessions to consult, the man of science stands in no dread of the results to which he may be led, and is placed at no disadvantage when he replaces

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beliefs, however time-honoured they may be, by the newer phases of thought to which his studies have led.

Four very definite questions may be said to contain in their replies, the materials for constructing the full history of any living being. The queries to which I allude are such as the child might well ask respecting any object presented for the first time to his view; and it is worthy of note that the methods of inquiry through which the cumulative experience of ordinary life is gained find in the questionings of science a striking parallel. First, and most naturally, we inquire concerning the living being, "What is it?" Next in order comes the question, "How does it live?" Thirdly, the query, "Where is it found?" appears as a most natural inquiry; and the question, "How has it come to be what it is?" may fitly close the list of scientific interrogations. It may be said that, could we perfectly and fully answer these four queries as applied to any living thing, the history of such a form might be regarded as being in every sense complete. Its present history, its past existence, its way of life, its bodily mechanism, its evolution and descent-these, and other points in which the life and being of an animal or plant is summed up, are included in the replies to our four queries. Answer these questions fully, I repeat, respecting an animal or plant, and you leave no item in its history unexplained. When they shall have been fully answered respecting the known organic world, then will dawn a millennium in biological and other sciences, of which, however, not the remotest shadow of a dream has yet crossed the scientific expectation. Full as our knowledge is on many points of structure and life history, biologists too frankly recognise the gaps in their information to hope for or expect the completion of their science even in the most distant years that from the present horizon we care to scan. Still, the labour of investigation proceeds apace-slowly, it may be, yet hopefully; and every scientific advance which the present sees or the future may know, may assuredly be regarded as filling up, wholly or in part, one or more of the replies to the four questions wherein, as we have seen, the gist of biology is comprised.

The principle of the division of labour which has wrought such wonderful changes and improvements in human affairs, political, social, and commercial, has extended its advantages to the domain of life-science, in that each query possesses its allotted branch as the agent for supplying its answer. Part of the excellence of biological reasoning, and of scientific method at large, consists in the fact that the labour of investigation is divided amongst three well-marked branches of inquiry; whilst the answers to the fourth and last question on our list are in reality supplied by the concentrated knowledge of the three preceding replies. Thus, to the question "What is it ?"

the science we name "Morphology" gives us an answer. This department of biology concerns itself with structure alone. Under this head we gain a complete knowledge of the mechanism of the living being. A watchmaker, taking a watch or clock to pieces to ascertain the structure of the timepiece, investigates its "morphology." An engineer, describing to a bystander the principles of the mechanism he has constructed, is similarly detailing its morphological composition. The structure and build of the living body-animal or plant, high or low organism, be it remembered -is investigated under this first head of inquiry. It is morphology which places before us the few facts of structure perceptible in the animalcule; and it is this science, in its highest development, which investigates the complexities of the human organisation itself.

But "morphology" can readily be shown to possess a subdivision into three important branches, each dealing with a special phase of living structure. There exists, firstly, the subdivision Anatomy, which deals with the structure of the fully developed (or adult) animal or plant. Next in order comes Development-a study all-important, as we shall hereafter see, in the eyes of modern biologists. Through development we obtain a knowledge of the manner in which the adult body, which "anatomy" investigates, came to assume its perfect and completed form. Development, in short, initiates us into Nature's manufactories, and shows us her methods of evolving living organisms. Just as even a rapid run through a watch-manufactory, and a glance at this table and that, or a look at the various stages in the progress of the watch towards perfection, would afford an idea of the fashioning and forming of the watch, so development gives us an insight into the process and method employed and followed in the formation of the animal or plant. The pin or pen we think so little of, came to be what it is through a highly complex process of manufacture. To thoroughly know what the pin or the pen is, we should naturally require a knowledge of how it was made. Just so in nature; development teaches us how the animal and the plant is made-nay, more, it tells us also, by the way, a wondrous tale respecting the causes of the manufacture, and the circumstances which have led Nature to frame her living possessions according to one fashion or another, and to relate, it may be, apparently diverse articles of her handiwork in the closest bond of intimacy and union. Last of all, a third department of morphology, or the science of structure, exists in the shape of Taxonomy or Classification. It is the plainest of truisms, that we can only classify and arrange any set of objects truly and satisfactorily when we really know the objects, and when we possess a perfect acquaintance with their structure. Hence "classification" falls into a most natural place when, after the acquirement of knowledge concerning the structure and nature of

living beings, we are able as a consequence to place together those which are truly alike, and to separate those which are unlike.

By way of illustrating the application of morphology, and on the principle that example is better than precept, let us select as an example of scientific inquiry the history of a fish. Under the head of morphology, the biologist is bound to take account of every detail of structure which that animal exhibits. Through the aid of "anatomy" he will make its acquaintance as a fully formed being; he will ascertain the full details of its structure; note the form, number, position, and relation of its organs; and in general obtain a thorough knowledge of its composition and bodily mechanism. But anatomy does not inform him of the prior history of the fish ; hence he turns to development as a means of showing him the manner in which the fish-body grew and was fashioned. Beginning as a small speck of protoplasm, indistinguishable from the matter which forms the whole body of the lower animalcule, he would trace for us the evolution of the complex body from materials of extreme simplicity. Hour by hour, and day by day, he would chronicle the changes in the division of the egg, the first appearance of the embryo, the beginnings of the heart-pulse, the formation of brain and nerve, and the outlining of body at large. And, finally, he would show how the completed being, evolved by strange artifice from literal nothingness, grows to its adult form and takes its place amongst the finished products of nature. Such are the details of development.

Finally, asking himself concerning the place and rank of the fish in the scale of creation, the biologist would turn to classification to aid him in his search. Ascertaining the structure and development of other fishes, he would know accurately enough the proper sphere to which science calls, and in which science places, the form before him. He would find cause to utterly reject classifications and systems of arrangement not founded upon a true knowledge of structure. The whale, for instance, is classified as a fish by primitive man-and, I may add, also by persons amongst ourselves, whose culture professes to be by no means of a low grade. It is fish-like in form and appearance; it inhabits the sea; its conditions of life are evidently those of the fish. Why, then, asks popular opinion, is the whale not a fish, seeing that in any case the latter is " very like a whale"? To this question the biologist can but reply, that if nature has modelled whale and fish on the same lines, he can have no quarrel with nature on that account. His, however, is the duty to assure himself that the fish and whale are really alike. Through anatomy he learns that, outwardly alike as the two animals are, things in this instance are really not what they seem. The fish, his study of morphology informs him, has cold blood, and a heart con