ECONOMIC ZOOLOGY 5 



kingdom into protozoa or unicellular animals, 

 and metazoa or multicellular animals. 



Having now briefly defined the objects and 

 the position of our enquiry, let us turn for a 

 moment to consider it from the economic or 

 cui bono standpoint. Economic zoology is to 

 morphology what the industrial arts are to fine 

 art — with a difference upon which it is not 

 necessary to insist. Many of the aforesaid 

 objects of enquiry are so rarely seen that their 

 disappearance from the face of the earth would 

 not produce any perceptible effect upon the 

 economy or balance of nature. Most living 

 things are popularly conceived to be of no use 

 in the wild state ; and their extermination, so 

 long as they remain indomitable and refuse, as 

 it were, to take the oath of allegiance to man, 

 appears to be inseparable from the progress 

 of civilisation. In many cases their specific 

 longevity seems to be approaching the end, in 

 precisely the same manner as is the racial 

 longevity of the primitive and fast vanishing 

 races of mankind. 



The Rev. Gregor Mendel, Abbot of Briinn, 

 whose experiments in practical heredity are now 

 appraised by some of his followers at an even 

 higher rate than those of Charles Darwin, was 

 coeval with his posthumous rival, though appar- 

 ently unknown to him even by repute. They 



were contemporaries working independently 



a 2 



