CHAPTER i 



AN OUTLINE OF THE RISE OF BIOLOGY AND OF 

 THE EPOCHS IN ITS HISTORY 



"Truth is the Daughter of Time." 



The nineteenth century will be for all time memorable 

 for the great extension of the knowledge of organic nature. 

 It was then that the results of the earlier efforts of mankind 

 to interpret the mysteries of nature began to be fruitful; 

 observers of organic nature began to see more deeply into 

 the province of life, and, above all, began to see how to direct 

 their future studies. It was in that century that the use of 

 the microscope made known the similarity in cellular con- 

 struction of all organized beings; that the substance, proto- 

 plasm, began to be recognized as the physical basis of life 

 and the seat of all vital activities; then, most contagious 

 diseases were traced to microscopic organisms, and as a con- 

 sequence, medicine and surgery were reformed; then the 

 belief in the spontaneous origin of life under present condi- 

 tions was given up; and it was in that century that the 

 doctrine of organic evolution gained general acceptance. 

 These and other advances less generally known created an 

 atmosphere in which biology — the great life-science — grew 

 rapidly. 



In the same period also the remains of ancient life, long 

 since extinct, and for countless ages embedded in the rocks, 

 were brought to light, and their investigation assisted mate- 

 rially in understanding the living forms and in tracing their 

 genealogy. 



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