/ 



{Authors are responsible for nomenclaiure used). 



^X 





The Scottish Naturalist 



Nos. 87 AND 88.] 1919 [March-April. 



ANIMALS AND MAN. 



The distinctive feature of scientific development in modern 

 times has been the tendency to decentralisation. Not only 

 have the great sciences become more independent and more 

 self-centred, but round each nucleus have clustered secondary 

 centres of development, which are constantly increasing in 

 number, and each of which tends to become more and more 

 independent of the parent science. Like other sciences, that 

 concerned with animal life has both benefited and suffered 

 from this phase of specialisation. It has benefited in having 

 been enabled to probe more intensively the manifestations 

 of life ; it has suffered in so far as each new development, 

 laying stress on its independence, has lost touch with the 

 wider knowledge of which it is a branch. Of the latter-day 

 developments of zoology, that which has most attracted 

 popular interest and attention is the phase of Economic 

 Zoology, which selects from the wider field of animal lore 

 only such facts as have some immediate bearing on the 

 welfare of man, and claims these for its province. It is well 

 to remember, however, that Economic Zoology is not and 

 cannot be a self-centred and self-sustaining science, inde- 

 pendent of the zoology of the schools; it is a mistake, as 

 Mr M. A. C. Hinton has pointed out, to suppose that there 

 are " two kinds of science one called ' applied,' essential, 

 it extracts gold ; the other called ' pure,' quite unimportant, 

 87 AND Z*^ E 



