THE NATURALIST'S FOUR QUESTIONS 



form the raw materials of another quarter (the 

 physiology quarter) of the science of Life-Lore or 

 Biology. 



The third question is, Whence is this ? and, 

 though it may have been as old as the others, the 

 answering of it is very modern. It is really a double 

 question, for we may inquire into the life-history 

 or development of the individual living creature, 

 or we may inquire into the race-history or evolution 

 of the group to which the particular creature belongs. 

 That is to say, we may study the child-creature in 

 its cradle and early days the tiny beginning of the 

 plant inside the seed, the bee-grub in the comb, 

 the young skate in its mermaid's purse, the tadpoles 

 in the pond before they are in the least like frogs, 

 the unhatched chick within the egg-shell and the 

 answer to the question, Whence came this indi- 

 vidual living creature as a whole and in each of its 

 parts ? is the science of life-history (embryology). 

 Or we may study fossils which are the remains of the 

 forerunners of present-day plants and animals, 

 and this history of the race, as it is hidden in the 

 rocky graveyards of the buried past, makes the 

 science of race-becoming (palaeontology). The two 

 together go to make up a third quarter of Life -Lore. 



There remains a fourth question, also very ancient, 

 but it has only begun to be answered : How have 

 present-day living creatures come to be as they are ? 

 The present is the child of the past, and the plants 

 and animals living around us are the descendants 

 the changed descendants of plants and animals, 

 on the whole simpler, which lived before them and 



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