

An Outline of the History of Biology. 



o piece of work in morphology or physiology is com- 

 plete until it is seen in its aetiological or evolutionary 

 aspects. " Evolution bears, in fact, the same relation 

 to morphology and physiology as history to statistics." 



As to the old-fashioned "Natural History" or the new- 

 fashioned "Bionomics ", that is eminently physiological ; 

 the habits of the organism, the behaviour of mates, 

 the manage of the family, the competition and co-opera- 

 tion among fellows, the struggle for existence in its 

 widest sense the study of these is physiological, just 

 as classification or the working-out of genealogical trees 

 is morphological. 



As to Embryology, it has been until recently almost 

 wholly morphological the study of stages in the grow- 

 ing organism, in the developing organs, in the dif- 

 ferentiating tissues, in the lineage of cells. To this, 

 quite recently, there has been added some physiological 

 analysis of the actual processes at work in the develop- 

 ment. 



Finally, as to Palaeontology, this is strictly morpho- 

 logical the anatomy, perhaps even the histology, of 

 the extinct. That both palaeontology and embryology 

 have become what might be called historical or genea- 

 logical in their aims, is wholly due to the influence of 

 the evolution doctrine. Palaeontology had not this 

 meaning to Cuvier, nor embryology to Wolff. 



But to infer from this summary that the history of 

 biology for the last hundred years and more has been a 

 steady and orderly progress in scientific analysis would 

 be an entire misunderstanding. Since the beginning of 

 the Victorian era, at least, there has been contempo- 

 raneous work on all the five lines, and many a worker 

 has been at once morphologist and physiologist, at 

 several levels of analysis. Moreover, it must be remem- 

 bered that a retrospect of progress from a vantage- 

 ground of achievement is apt to see a definiteness in 

 the various movements which those who shared in them 

 were but dimly aware of. And, finally, we must recog- 

 nize that while to-day's description of the externals of a 

 new species may be called a Linnaean piece of work, 

 and a modern anatomical paper Cuvierian, and so on, 



