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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



different from botany and zoology ; that a man might obtain an ex- 

 tensive knowledge of the structure and functions of plants and ani- 

 mals, without having need to enter upon the study of geology and 

 mineralogy, and vice versa ; and, further, as knowledge advanced, it 

 became clear that there was a great analogy, a very close alliance, 

 between those two sciences of botany and zoology which deal with 

 living beings, while they are much more widely separated from all 

 other studies. It is due to Buffon to remark that he clearly recog- 

 nized, this great fact. He says : " Ces deux genres d'etres organises 

 (les animaux et les vegetaux) ont beaucoup plus de proprietes com- 

 munes que de differences reelles." Therefore it is not wonderful that 

 at the beginning of the present century, and oddly enough in two 

 different countries, and, so far as I know, without any intercom- 

 munication between the respective writers, two famous men clearly 

 conceived the notion of uniting the whole of the sciences which 

 deal with living matter into one whole, and of dealing with them as 

 one discipline. In fact, I may say there were three men to whom this 

 idea occurred contemporaneously, although there were but two who 

 carried it into effect, and only one who worked it out completely. The 

 persons to whom I refer were the eminent physiologist Bichat, 1 the 

 great naturalist Lamarck, in France ; and a distinguished German, 

 Treviranus. Bichat assumed the existence of a special group of 

 " physiological" sciences. Lamarck, in a work published in 1801, 2 for 

 the first time made use of the name " biologie," from the two Greek 

 words which signify a discourse upon life and living things. About 

 the same time it occurred to Treviranus that all those sciences which 

 deal with living matter are essentially and fundamentally one, and 

 ought to be treated as a whole, and in the year 1802 he published 

 the first volume of what he also called " Biologie." Treviranus's 

 great merit consists in this, that he worked out his idea, and that he 

 published the very remarkable book to which I refer, which consists 

 of six volumes, and which occupied him for twenty years from 1802 

 to 1822. 



That is the origin of the term " biology," and that is how it has 

 come about that all clear thinkers and lovers of consistent nomenclat- 

 ure have substituted for the old confusing name of " natural history," 

 which has conveyed so many meanings, the term " biology " to de- 

 note the whole of the sciences which deal with living things, whether 

 they be animals or whether they be plants. Some little time ago in 

 the course of this year, I think I was favored by a^ learned classic, 

 Dr. Field, of Norwich, with a disquisition, in which he endeavored to 

 prove that from a philological point of view neither Treviranus nor 

 Lamarck had any right to coin this new word "biology" for his 



1 See the distinction between the " sciences physiques " and the " sciences physiolo- 

 giques " in the " Anatomie Generale," 1801. 



2 " Hydrogeologie," an. x. (1801). 



