43 G r.IOLOGY IN RELATION TO OTHER NATURAL SCIENCES. 



and agitate in the confideiico of eveiituai success. It is not tlie fault 

 of goverunients, but of the nation, tiiat tlie claims of science are not 

 recognized. We have against us an overwhehnmg majority of the 

 community, not merely of the ignorant, but of those Avho regard tliem- 

 selves as educated, ^Yho vahie science only in so far as it can be turned 

 into money; for we are still in great measure, in greater measure than 

 any other, a nation of shop-keepers. Let ns who are of the minority — 

 the remimnt who believe that truth is in itself of supreme value, and 

 the knowledge of it of supreme utility — do all that we can to bring 

 public opinion to our ,side, so that the century which has given Young, 

 Faraday, Lyell, Darwin, Maxwell, and Thompson to England may, 

 before it closes, see us prepared to take our part with other countries 

 in combined action for the full development of natural knowledge. 



Last year the necessity of an imperial observatory for physical sci- 

 ence was, as no doubt many are aware, the subject of a discussion in 

 Section A, which derived its interest from the number of leading* physi- 

 cists who took i)art in it, and especially from the presence and active 

 particii)ation of the distinguished man who is at the head of the 

 National Physical Laboratory at Berlin. The equally pressing neces- 

 sity for a central institution for chemistry, on a scale commensurate 

 with the practical importance of that science, has been insisted upon 

 in this association and elsewhere by distinguished chemists. As 

 regards biology, I shall have a word to say in the same direction this 

 evening. Of these three requirements it may be that the first is the 

 most pressing. If so, let us all, whatever branch of science we repre- 

 sent, unite our efibrts to realize it, in the assurance that if once the 

 claim of science to liberal public support is admitted the rest will 

 follow. 



In selecting a subject on which to address you this evening, I have 

 followed the example of my predecessors in limiting myself to matters 

 more or less connected with my own scientific occupations, believing 

 that in discussing what most interests myself I should have the best 

 chance of interesting you. The circumstance that at the last meeting 

 of the British Association in this town. Section D assumed for the first 

 time the title which it has siiu-e held, that of the Section of Biology, 

 suggested to me that I might take the word "biology" as my starting- 

 point, giving you some account of its origin and first use, and of the 

 relations which subsist between biology and other branches of natural 

 science. 



OUKilN AND MEANING OE THE TERM " IJIOLOdY." 



The term "biology," which is now so familiar as comprising the sum 

 of the knowledge which has as yet been acquired concerning living 

 nature, was unknown until after the beginning of the present century. 

 The term was first employed by Treviranus, who proposed to himself 

 as a life-task the developmentof a new science, the aim of which should 



