BIOLOGY AMONG THE SCIENCES 1129 



been, as primarily that between Botany and Zoology. Each of course 

 has its own speciaHsms; and more especially the latter, for (say) 

 birds, fish, corals, microbes, insects have certainly no living multi- 

 specialist at all adequately competent in them all; nor, indeed, as 

 all their skilled specialists would say, has any one of these enormous 

 groups been mastered in its manifold aspects. Yet as we compare 

 these concrete interests, we find these alike guided by a kindred 

 logic, from which conceptions arise common to all the multiplicities 

 of these phenomenal forms. Hence the preceding sections of this 

 book, which is neither a manual of zoology nor j'et of botany, and 

 still less of any single group of living beings amongst these, but a 

 discussion of the main aspects of biological work and thought, draw- 

 ing its illustrations from any or every convenient group or type. We 

 have thus begun, as did our science, with animal stories; but these 

 now in their more scientific form, as Ecology, which sees how life 

 adapts itself to mastery of its environment, and not merely submits 

 to it. From this we naturally passed to a discussion and illustration 

 of physiological principles, seeing how the systems and organs of 

 the body function, separately and together; and so conveniently 

 for both fields of study, some introduction to Psychology as well. 



From these studies of life's functioning, we next considered some- 

 thing of its forms; hence our chapters on Taxonomy and general 

 Morphology, with some outline of comparative Anatomy, with that 

 more minutely analytic anatomy called Histology. But taxonomy 

 requires for its completion all the forms we can recover from the 

 past, hence our Palseontography in outline; and anatomy needs 

 for its understanding the fascinating inquiries of Embryography, 

 which renders anatomy so much more intelligible. Only with this 

 broad six-fold survey of life were we at all prepared to enter the 

 supremely difficult discussion of its evolution, and this for groups 

 and individuals as well; in brief, their Phylogeny and Ontogeny. 

 So far then we have no less than eight essential sub-sciences of 

 biology; and into these, with increasingly common consent, all its 

 inquiries conveniently fall. And though, as already said, no man can 

 fully master any one of these, much less all of them, we teachers 

 have in common an intelligent interest in all these fields to share 

 with students and readers. Yet science did not start thus equipped; 

 thus, though something of ecology is as old as the fabulists, and 

 something of anatomy and physiology as old as mummies and 

 medicine, their substantial knowledge is comparativeh^ recent. So, 

 too, for embryology; for though touched by Aristotle, it had to wait 

 for renewal until Harvey, and for its modern study practically until 

 Von Baer, still a little more than a century ago. So again, despite 

 bright speculations on the real nature of fossils, as by Leonardo, 

 Palissy, and others, the science only really began a century ago 

 with Cuvier. And as for evolution, though again the Greeks and 



