22 Chapters in Modern Botany CHAP. 



approval, the more so because of its new and dramatic 

 form, the plant, usually the passive prey of the animal, 

 turning the tables and making the animal its victim. A 

 great step was thus made towards realising that view of 

 nature, that physiology not of the machinery of the indi- 

 vidual merely, but of species in their relation to all the life 

 around them, which it is probably the very greatest of all 

 Darwin's services to have put before us in so many of its 

 scenes. This is what many old writers meant by " Natural 

 History," and what too many modern German authors un- 

 fortunately confuse with the well-established general name 

 including all the fields of organic science as " Biologie." 

 Semper therefore prefers to speak of this his favourite study 

 (see his Animal Life in International Science Series) as 

 the "physiology of organisms," of course in distinction to 

 the physiology of organs. Mr. Wallace terms this the 

 "higher physiology," while Professor Ray Lankester has 

 suggested the convenient term of bionomics. 



The last term has many advantages, not the least being 

 that its very sound and form helps us to realise its meaning 

 as expressing the economics of each of the innumerable 

 species with which we share the planet. It is, we trust, 

 likely to come into general use, and to supersede the 

 vague or confused terms above mentioned. 



Bionomics. It is important clearly to distinguish in the 

 work and influence of Darwin the various elements ; since 

 putting aside altogether his evolutionary theories, his work 

 in thus reopening the study of natural history in its widest 

 aspects, of constituting Bionomics as Cuvier did Compar- 

 ative Anatomy or Palaeontology, or Linnaeus Taxonomy, 

 must always remain of the first magnitude. It is thus 

 worth a little time fully to realise this. The child at first 

 delightedly watches the bees and butterflies upon the 

 flowers ; grown a little older he hunts and kills ; and 



