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The Queensland Naturalist. 
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which seem altogether foreign to natural history. It will 
exercise his ingenuity and sagacity. It will extend his 
knowledge of the possibilities of life." (Prof. L. C. Miall.) 
BIOLOGY AND USEFUL ENDS. 
Further, it may be claimed for the study and knowledge 
of living things that they have most important and far- 
reaching practical ends. This is not a consideration that 
always weighs with educationalists, but it is one that often 
does so with those who have a voice in deciding, the method 
which education shall proceed, as weU as the scope of its 
endeavour. 
It is not merely a matter to-day, of deriving from external 
nature the benefits contemplated by Shakespeare, when he 
wrote in his Romeo and Juliet the following; — 
‘ ‘ O mickle is the powerful grace, that lies 
In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities ; 
For nought so vile that on the earth doth live, 
But to the earth some special good doth give." 
Nor is it that Biology is a science that ministers, in an 
exclusive manner, to the requirements of the medical 
practitioner, whether concerned with human or animal 
pathology. 
For almost every profession, every industry indeed, that 
is concerned with animals and plants — both high and low — 
or with their products or derivatives, implies a knowledge of 
the underlying principles of the science, or of the facts as- 
certained by its presentation, and, moreo^^er, the pioneers 
in both have often been themselves biologists, or have had 
biologists for their guidance at their disposal. 
To enlarge on this theme would involve our writing 
many chapters on the history of applied science. To mention 
a single illustration that afforded by the biology of some 
of the lowest kinds of plant life, belonging to the simpler 
forms of fungi. The vital activities of these enter into the 
following amongst other technical processes, that cannot be 
adequately carried out in the absence of knowledge concerning 
them : — Water filtration, deodorization, disinfection, colour 
production, tobacco-curing, hay-curing, ensilage production, 
alcoholic fermentation in bread, beer, wine, and spirit pro- 
duction, lactic and butyric fermentations in cheese manu- 
facture, acetic fermentation, vinegar, citric acid production, 
tanning, the milk industries, cold storage of animals and 
meat and fruit alike, and last, but not least, soil improvement. 
Or take again the various bacteria, those diminutive 
representations of the plant world, and their often complicated 
functions, a knowledge of this covers a very Made field of 
practical operations concerned not only with hygiene, but also 
with industrial pursuits of many kinds. In fact, civil 
engineers who have pleaded for the inclusion of biology 
