CHAPTER III 



BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE 



As the origins of physical science are found in the 

 observation of natural mechanical phenomena and 

 the use of primitive tools, so the beginnings of biology 

 are to be sought in the observation of wild animals 

 and plants, the gradual domestication of some of 

 them, and the rise of a rational medicine and surgery 

 from the chaos of ideas which preceded it. 



The cultivation of plants, such as the cereals, most 

 of which seem to have been originally natives of the 

 lands round the Eastern Mediterranean, had not been 

 conducted entirely at haphazard. The writers of 

 classical times, who wrote on agricultural subjects, 

 laid great emphasis on the necessity of saving seed 

 from the largest and finest plants for next year's 

 crop ; showing that the effects of selection had been 

 noticed, and the idea of a progressive improvement 

 in natural qualities had been put in execution, some 

 two thousand years before the inward meaning of 

 such a conception affected the growth of knowledge 

 as a whole. 



In the purely observational sciences of natural 



