BIOLOGY AND CHEMISTRY 



Biology presents in every line a striking con- 

 trast to Chemistry. It does not need experi- 

 ments to such an extent as Chemistry does. 

 Chemical objects lie unchanged before us, their 

 qualities unaltered, unless we disturb them by 

 experiment. Animated Nature works upon our 

 senses in the most striking manner. In animals 

 and plants gay and bright colours delight our 

 eyes. How much too do we not feel attracted 

 by the different forms of movement in living 

 beings ? In the childhood of the civilisation of 

 mankind, as well as in that of the individual, Life 

 and Motion, without any visible external agency, 

 are nearly identical conceptions. The variability of 

 phenomena in animated Nature which are acces- 

 sible to mere observation without experiments 

 is so great, so infinitely great, that the method of 

 experiment in Biology seemed to be entirely 

 unnecessary to all great naturalists up to the 

 eighteenth century. Much more attention was 

 given to the comparison of the different phenomena 

 of life. This method is what we in our days call 

 Comparative Biology. This branch of Biology is 

 particularly occupied with the study of the form 

 and the structure of organisms, that is, Mor- 

 phology and its annexes, Embryology, Anatomy, 

 and Histology. 



The more we feel the importance and pre- 

 ponderance of Morphology and of comparative 

 investigation in Biology, the more we must in- 

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