GEOLOGICAL BIOLOGY. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE HISTORY OF ORGANISMS. ITS SCOPE AND 

 IMPORTANCE. 



Man an Organism among Organisms. — Man has been very 

 slow to grasp the fact that he is an organism among organ- 

 isms. Darwin was the first to speak with such loud em- 

 phasis as to thoroughly rouse the world to an appreciation of 

 the very intimate relationship man bears to the whole series 

 of organic forms of not only present but all past time. We 

 are apt to be offended by the bold statement that man is de- 

 scended from the monkeys, but, without insisting upon the 

 truth of this specific statement, the investigations of modern 

 science have demonstrated beyond controversy that the same 

 conditions of affinity and relationship which lead to the classi- 

 fication of animals into species, genera, or classes, and as con- 

 nected with each other by direct genetic descent, apply to 

 man as one of the organisms. 



For want of a better name this relationship of man to 

 other organisms may be called his natural-history relationship. 

 Man is an organism among organisms, and it is this fact that 

 lifts the history of organisms out of the field of simple mor- 

 phological or physiological sciences into a place of direct 

 human interest. Man's origin and history is intimately asso- 

 ciated with the origin and history of other living beings in the 

 world. 



Not only is there human interest in the subject of the his- 

 tory of organisms, but because of this interest there is a de- 



