NATURAL SCIENCE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 371 



many other sciences. We now have also fertile hybrids between 

 chemistry and biology (physiological chemistry, bio-chemistry, 

 chemical biology, etc.), and between physics and geology (geo- 

 physics), between electricity and chemistry (electro-chemistry), 

 between physics and mineralogy, etc. Hybridizing of this kind 

 is one of the most characteristic as well as one of the most fruit- 

 ful phenomena of the nineteenth century. 



Botany, zoology and geology, daughters of natural history, 

 were the children of its old age, for the term " natural history " is 

 as ancient as Aristotle, while geology was not fully born until the 

 publication of Lyell's Principles in 1830, and biology not until 

 the era of the great generalists of the Victorian Age Darwin, 

 Spencer, Huxley, etc. soon after the middle of what one of 

 them, Wallace, well qualified by his own great work to speak 

 with authority, has called "the wonderful century." Botany 

 and zoology as such arose about the beginning of the century. 

 Geology, dealing with the natural history of the earth and its 

 lifeless contents, and biology, dealing with the world of life, have 

 both now very numerous progeny, e.g. from geology, stratigraphy, 

 mineralogy, petrography, petrology, palaeontology, etc., and from 

 biology, zoology and botany, with their numerous subdivisions, 



morphology, physiology, cytology, anthropology, bacteriology, 

 parasitology, etc. Here also highly prolific crossing has oc- 

 curred both among members of each minor group and also be- 

 tween members of the two major groups, natural philosophy and 

 natural history; as, for example, in palaeontology, which may 

 be said to be half geology and half biology, in physiological 

 optics, in bio-metrics, etc. To the very beginning of the century 

 belongs the first appearance of the term " biology," introduced 

 by Treviranus (1776-1837) a German naturalist and professor 

 of mathematics in Bremen who in 1802-1805 published a work 

 entitled Biologic, oder Philosophic der lebenden Natur. 



The greatest achievement of natural history, not only of the 

 nineteenth century but of all time, was the bringing about of the 

 general acceptance of a new cosmogony the theory of evolution 



on the presentation by the naturalist Darwin of convincing 



