History of Biology. 345 



CHAPTER XL 



HISTORY OF BIOLOGY. 



IN order to obtain a complete view, even though in outline 

 only, of any science, it is necessary that some effort should 

 be made to understand the chief stages in its history, the 

 more noticeable features in its development. In the pre- 

 ceding chapters we have considered a few of the more im- 

 portant types illustrating the structure and physiology of the 

 plant and animal kingdoms. No effort has been made even 

 to sketch the principles governing the distribution of living 

 organisms, nor have we entered at all into the great question 

 of their etiology or genealogy. Under these circumstances 

 it would be, of course, entirely out of place to mention any 

 of the multitudinous systems of classification of plants and 

 animals the knowledge of which was in old times, and is by 

 some even yet, considered the aim and object of zoological 

 and botanical study. We may, however, endeavour to ob- 

 tain some conception of the gradual evolution, so to speak, 

 of the science of biology out of a mass of isolated and 

 disconnected observations, the collecting of which, as we 

 have seen in the Introduction, forms the first stage in the 

 development of any science. 



Aristotle has been often termed the ' father of natural 

 history,' and certainly he and his pupil Theophrastus in the 

 fourth century B.C. may be looked on as the first collabora- 

 teurs of that vast catalogue of species to which the scientific 

 expedition of H.M.S. Challenger (1872-76) has added only 

 the latest chapter. 



