Biologists Study Animals and Plants 



What is biology? Biology is the study 

 of Hving things. This means that biology 

 is the study of all animals, including 

 man, of all plants, and of those simple 

 living things which we do not know 

 whether to call animal or plant. Since 

 biology is the study of all living things, 

 all of us have been biologists (students 

 of biology) in a small way all of our 

 lives. When you learned the name of the 

 robin you were, for the moment, a bi- 

 ologist. To be more exact you were a 

 zoologist (zoh-ol'-o-jist), a student of 

 animals. Would it make it seem more 

 important if you knew that this branch 

 of zoology was called ornithology, the 

 study of birds? You were learning biol- 

 ogy w^hen you noticed that a dog would 

 dash after a ball (the science of animal 

 behavior) and when you noted green 

 leaves come out in the spring (botany, 

 the science of plants). You were an 

 unwilling biologist, too, when you had 

 measles or scarlet fever and discovered 

 how other organisms can affect man. 



Evidently biology is the study of 

 living things in any way in which a 

 biologist wants to study them. You may 

 think that this makes biology a large 

 and varied science — and so it does. 

 There are many sub-sciences that make 

 up the larger science of biology. You 

 have just read the names of a few of 

 them; there are many others which you 

 will read about in this book. 



What to study about living things. 

 Most people will say that one of the 

 first things to learn about a living thing 

 is its name. This is true. Most of the 

 living things you see frequently have 

 common names and you will want to 

 learn some of them. You can learn to 

 know an oak tree from a maple tree 

 and a woodchuck from a skunk. In 

 some cities you will see maples, elms, 

 and poplars along the streets; in others 

 palms and pepper trees. You will enjoy 

 knowing these names as well as the 

 names of common breeds of dogs and 

 cats and of many other animals and 

 plants. 



But more important than the names 

 of living things is a knowledge of their 

 structure; that is, the parts of which a 

 living thing is made and how these parts 

 fit together to make a whole orgaiiism 

 (or'gan-ism), a single living thing. 

 Since you are more interested in your- 

 selves than in any other organism, it is 

 especially useful to you to know the 

 structure of your body. When you 

 have completed a year's work in biology, 

 you will know something about how 

 you and all other human beings are 

 constructed: what your heart is like 

 and your stomach and your brain and 

 the other parts of your body. Of course 

 in one year's time you will not be able 

 to learn very much about living things. 

 The men and women who spend their 



