348 Elementary Biology. 



Galileo, Geber and Van Helmont, and all the host of phy- 

 sicists and chemists that the alchemical movement of the 

 middle ages directly or indirectly gave birth to, had lived 

 and left their mark. The telescope was revealing what 

 was hidden in the sky beyond man's unaided vision, and 

 the microscope was preparing, under the fostering genius of 

 Leeuwenhceck (1632-1723), to tell him of the wonders that 

 lay unknown at his feet. Although in the end of the seven- 

 teenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries we 

 still meet with natural historians of the old school in the 

 form of Ray (1628-1705) and Willoughby (1635-1672), 

 Buffon, (1707-1788) and Linnaeus (1707-1778), yet these 

 famous writers were the last of their race, for a new epoch 

 was dawning in the history of our science. 



As might be expected, no attempt worth refeiring to was 

 made in those early days to elucidate the nature of the 

 origin and development of living things, nor was it possible 

 in the condition of Geography and Geology to make even a 

 start, in the great subject of distribution. Even function 

 was not in those times treated separately from structure ; 

 no attempt was made to separate morphology from physiology. 

 The Histoire Naturelle (1749) of Buffon and the Systenia 

 Naturce (1736) of Linnceus were merely encyclopaedias 

 giving in the one case a popular, in the other a scientific, 

 account of the animals and plants then known. At this 

 point, however, we meet with a great advance, due perhaps 

 as much to the introduction of the microscope into biological 

 research as to anything else. Morphology and physiology 

 began to separate from each other, and eager workers 

 rapidly appeared in both subjects to raise the splendid 

 monuments of intellect that we are able to look upon 

 to-day. 



Just as in the natural order of procedure in the exami- 

 nation of an animal or a plant we treat first of the organism 

 as a whole, its appearance, habits, and so on. and then pass 

 to a consideration of the structure and functions of the 



