148 
The Ohio Naturalist. 
[Vol. II, No. 2 r 
success of the club particularly in the new enterprise of publish- 
ing a journal ; the other the duty, honor and privilege of pre- 
paring an address for this occasion. I presume you have all had 
the experience of contemplating some distance in the future a 
certain duty, debating the most suitable theme or method, and 
perhaps seen the time grow shorter and shorter with little real 
accomplishment. If I were to enumerate the various topics that 
have come to my mind as suitable for this occasion it would 
exhaust quite a part of our time ; if I could reproduce the 
current of thought that has flowed from time to time along the 
pathways of such topics, I am sure you would experience a 
weariness that I should regret to occasion. 
The parts of biology which we may make thoroughly our own 
are very few. It may be profitable, therefore, occasionally to 
take a general survey of the field to see what its sphere of influ- 
ence may be, what phases of life are being advanced by its dis- 
coveries or by the distribution of knowledge which follows. It 
has seemed to me therefore that it would be appropriate this 
evening to attempt some such survey of biology, even though it 
be fragmentary and inadequate. 
For convenience in arrangement we may group this survey 
along the lines of practical applications of service to mankind, 
such as occur in medicine, agriculture and kindred industries, 
domestic and social life, and those which have to do with the 
acquisition of knowledge and with education. 
Applications of biology in medical science, in agriculture and 
in domestic life have in many cases assumed such intimate and 
essential character that we often look upon them as applied 
sciences more than in any other way. 
While biology has been the foundation of all rational systems 
of medicine and the constant servant of this most beneficent of 
human professions, the forms of its uses and the wide reach of 
its service have so increased in recent years that we almost have 
excuse in feeling that it is a modern acquisition. 
Could the ancient disciples of Eseulapius, with their views of 
physiology and anatomy, have seen the present scope of these 
subjects and the marvelous results in cure and control of diseases 
by the discoveries and applications in bacteriology, I doubt if 
they’ would have recognized it as any part of their biology. Still 
harder would it have been to appreciate the relations of malarial 
parasite, mosquito and man whereby a serious disease in the 
latter is occasioned. Intimate relations of two kinds of life, as 
evidenced in the common parasites, must have been familiar from 
early times and their effects duly recognized, though their means 
of access and necessary life cycles were long misunderstood. But 
such relations as are found to exist in the production of malaria, 
Texas fever and yellow fever have been so recently discovered 
