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- 
tially in understanding the living forms and in tracing their 
genealogy. 
