1833.] A Classification of the Natural Sciences, 1039 
preglacial times, since in the subsequent erosion it has been re- 
moved from many parts of the serpentine belt. The details of this 
decomposition of the serpentine and of its relation to glacial ero- 
sion have been discussed by the writer in an essay on rock 
decay, to appear in the American Journal of Science for Septem- 
ber, 1883. He acknowledged in conclusion his obligations to 
Dr. Britton for his careful description and for-his personal guid- 
ance on Staten island. 
:0; 
A CLASSIFICATION OF THE NATURAL SCIENCES. 
BY T. STERRY HUNT, LL.D, F.R.S. 
1° frame a rational classification of the natural sciences, and 
to define their mutual relations, has often been attempted. 
The present writer, in an essay read before the National Academy 
of Sciences in 1881, and published in the Z. Z. & D. Philosophical 
Magazine under the title of “ The Domain of Physiology,” sug- 
gested the basis of such a scheme, and now, at the suggestion of 
some of his readers, ventures to embody in a concise and tabu- 
lated form the views then and there enunciated, in the hope that 
other students may find it not unworthy of their notice. 
The study of material nature, or of the physical universe (for 
the terms natural and physical are synonymous), constitutes what 
the older scholars correctly and comprehensively termed physics, 
and presents itself in a two-fold aspect; first, as descriptive, and 
second, as philosophical; a distinction embodied in the terms 
natural history and natural philosophy, or more concisely in the 
. Words physiography and physiology. The latter word has, from 
the time of Aristotle, been employed in this general sense to 
designate the philosophical study of nature, and will be so used 
in the present classification. 
The world of nature is divided into the inorganic or mineralog- 
ical and the Organic or biological kingdoms, the divisions of the 
latter into vegetable and animal being a subordinate one. The 
natural history or physiography of the inorganic kingdom takes 
cognizance of the sensible characters of mineral species, and 
gives us descriptive and systematic mineralogy, which have hith- 
erto been restricted to native species, but in a wider sense include 
* Read in general session at Minneapolis meeting of A. A. A. S., Aug., 1883. 
