BEFORE DARWIN AND AFTER. 



with a definite speech for the first time, where- 

 by scientists were enabled to talk to one an- 

 other intelligently through distance and dura- 

 tion. The result is that the whole scientific 

 world employs the binomial nomenclature for 

 inter-comniunication ; one hears it in Japan 

 and in the Orient, a sort of universal lan- 

 guage of science. A great trainer it is also for 

 organizing thought ; it does not leave the indi- 

 vidual object isolated, but puts the same under 

 its species which again is subsumed under the 

 genus. The implication is that the process is 

 to continue till all Nature is ordered through 

 its various stages; indeed even Nature must 

 at last be subsumed under what is higher, 

 under the siimmum genus. So the binomial 

 nomenclature of the great Swedish botanist 

 we may well deem a genetic thought, which is 

 still productive in science. 



The microscope is the source of the most 

 important discoveries in biological science. 

 There is a dispute about the time and the in- 

 ventor of this instrument. But the application 

 of it belongs to the seventeenth century al- 

 most cotemporaneously in England, Italy and 

 Holland. Perhaps of these early microscop- 

 ists the most credit is due to Leeuwenhoek, 

 who first observed the connection between the 

 veins and arteries in the capillaries, though 

 this had been conjectured before him by Har- 



