BIOLOGY AMONG THE SCIENCES 



1131 



libraries, with dues to find whatever we really need or want, such 

 graphs will surely be reasonably justified; and this still more if they 

 have also served to outline the main history of the science also. Will 

 not, in fact, such graphics serve the reader as skeleton keys, whereby 

 he ma}^ obtain access to all biological departments of the museums 

 and libraries, and thereafter plunder them at will? Once really 

 appreciative of this interesting and profitable field of activity, he 

 must reasonably give a little patience to the making of these keys, 

 a matter which does undeniably require some time and trouble. 

 For simplest beginning, we may readily sort out our collection of 

 biological books and papers from among piles of others; and then 

 again sort these into eight heaps or rows corresponding to the sub- 

 sciences already outlined, and thus be ready to put them on our 

 bookcase shelves accordingly. But in what order? — for each of 

 these is necessarily at first but a minor confusion. Again, with the 

 usual library catalogue methods, we may list all these books and 

 papers, each on its own slip or card, since this distinctness is neces- 

 sary for orderly arrangement. What principles are to determine 

 this? Historical order first suggests itself, and so far well, for early 

 authors especiall}^, but obviously of no sufficient help amid the sea 

 of contemporary literature. Biology must here supply its own 

 classification. Its first broad distinction is that between structure 

 and function: organisms in their life and activity and change as 

 distinguished from the simple dissections and analyses of their forms. 

 This principle at once aids us to put the books and papers of dis- 

 tinctively ph^^siological interest on one side, say the right hand, 

 and those concerned with morphology, and thus primarily viewed 

 as if static and non-living, on the left. Next we can broadly dis- 

 tinguish, and in each of the groups on either hand, the study of 

 single individual forms and their life, which we may now arrange 

 for the lower half of our bookcase; and so leave its upper half for 

 the corresponding studies of organisms viewed in their larger 

 groupings and of their life drama. Our diagram has now its broad 

 outline clear. 



Structural 



Functional 



Yet before placing the books in either top or bottom half, let us 

 next consider what particular shelves may be needed in these to carry 

 order a stage further. We shall come nearest to repeating the pro^- 



