4 INTRODUCTION 



relationship with the biological sciences, but this claim 

 is only superficial and does not rest upon a common sense 

 interpretation of the biological group. 



The diagram, further, illustrates graphically the manner 

 in which the biological sciences are founded upon General 

 Biology. Several of them, however, cannot be said to have 

 taken root upon the more fundamental principles of living 

 things, for only within comparatively recent times have 

 these general principles been realized and recognized. 

 The descriptive sciences of Taxonomy, Palaeontology, 

 Anatomy, Histology and Pathology for example, may be 

 said to have started at the periphery of our sphere of the 

 biological sciences, and to have become correlated with 

 the other sciences dealing with living matter only gradually 

 and within the last sixty years. The one great principle 

 responsible for this correlation is Evolution, while from it 

 alone have sprung the recent sciences of Ecology, Experi- 

 mental Biology and Genetics. For a long period Physi- 

 ology was General Biology and more than any other 

 branch of the Biological sciences, is still intimately con- 

 nected with it. 



What then is General Biology? Many naturalists re- 

 fuse to recognize it or give it a place in their teachings, 

 while the majority of Universities have substituted de- 

 partments of Zoology and Botany and Physiology for the 

 erstwhile department of Biology. 



General Biology deals with the fundamental principles 

 of living matter; specifically, first, with protoplasm and 

 with the manifestations of vitality; second, with metabo- 

 lism, or the vital processes of waste and repair; third, 

 with the food of animals and plants and with the ultimate 

 sources and transformations of energy; fourth with the 

 fundamental structures of living things and with the 

 evolution of organic structures; fifth, with the inter-re- 

 lations of animals, plants, and intermediate organisms; 

 sixth with the phenomena of adolescence, fertilization and 

 reproduction, vitality, age and senescence, and, seventh, 



