2 GEOLOGICAL BIOLOGY. 



mand for discussion of the facts themselves from a special 

 point of view. 



The naturalist takes interest in the form and functions of 

 individual organisms from a scientific point of view ; they are 

 to him objects of interest in themselves. He classifies and 

 arranges them as favorite objects of knowledge. But the 

 general student, the active thinker, the busy worker in human 

 affairs finds the details of such studies irrelevant, and to him 

 the vital interest is in the questions concerning the relations 

 of organisms to the past and to himself. 



More than this, the deepest interest of all attaches to the 

 philosophy which is involved in the proposition that man is 

 not so distinct from the dumb organic world around him as 

 was up to a few years ago universally believed to be the case. 



History of Organisms and Man's Relationship to Living Things. 

 — If man has arisen from organisms that were not men ; if the 

 machinery of his vital organization is represented in less com- 

 plex form in other animals ; if he may find his functions in 

 operation in simpler forms of life, and separated into their 

 elements in lower types, then he has in the organic world a 

 field of study of the greatest interest, which he cannot neglect 

 without ignoring knowledge that is, in a literal sense, vital to 

 his best interests as a man. 



The study of the laws of organisms, their relations to each 

 other and to the conditions of environment, their antiquity, 

 their history, and the nature of those laws of adjustment 

 which are suggested by the words heredity and descent, varia- 

 bility, natural and unfavorable habitat, struggle for existence, 

 adaptation to environment, evolution, and many others which 

 have arisen within the last fifty years, is of more importance 

 than we ordinarily attach to the study of the curiosities of 

 natural history. 



The Discussion not from the Zoological and Botanical Side. — 

 The approach to the study of organisms, from the zoological 

 or botanical side, presents great difficulty in the very immen- 

 sity of the subject. When we attempt to analyze the charac- 

 ters of a single animal, to classify animals and describe them, 

 the mere mass of detail — the abundance of the characters to 

 be distinguished — removes the subject from a place in a gen- 



