250 The Queensland Naturalist. Vol. 1 
Iwanoff, indicate that these difficulties are not insuperable 
He, in fact, claims to have obtained results more certain 
and more important t]ian are the outcome of ordinary 
breeding operations. ^ 
Apart, however, from this, the science of biology, and 
that branch of it, evolutionary history, as developed by Charles 
Darwin, has had, and still has, an important influence in 
deciding the best methods to pursue in raising improved 
breeds of animals. 
Prior to the publication of “ The Origin of Species ’’ 
and of “ Animals and Plants Under Domestication,” in which 
are set forth many of the facts on which the former great 
work is based, stud-books, herd-books, and flock-books 
had come into existence, but it was through the incentive 
of his teaching that their present thoroughness came about, 
and although again Breeding b}^ Pedigree,” had given place 
to Breeding In and In,” all the economic results obtained, 
though sometimes great, were always uncertain. It was his 
discussion of evolutiorwy history, detailed only in the 
works referred to, that pointed to the existence of general 
laws of heredity (now more exactly expressed in Mendelism) 
that governed them, and how they were to be applied. Thus’ 
through the application of biology a science of breeding 
underlies the practical art and results are controlled with 
a success our ancestors little dreamt of. 
Thus, the agricultural student of to-day, aiming at the 
acquisition of useful knowledge and its application cannot 
afford to ignore the paramount classes of the two branches 
of Biology Botany and Zoology. To mention again one 
more of the many applications of this branch of Biology 
to industrial concerns, one may allude to the important 
results in creating races of silkworms with approved qualities 
by Toyama Ishiwata and others through applying the facts 
that Mendel discovered governing heredity. 
Ihe knowledge of diseases of animals and plants, 
constitutional as well as parasitic, and the action of injurious 
insects on man, beast, or vegetable, and the means for 
preventing or overcoming them (matters of great practical 
moment to the agriculturist) is intimately connected with 
Biology, and has been largely built up within the last few 
decades step by step with its progress. But on reflection 
this must be so, since animal and plant pathology are but 
divisions of the science. 
CONCLUSION. 
1. Method of Teaching . — The success of the teacher of 
this branch of knowledge will largely depend on how he 
addresses himself to the work in hand, and the attitude 
towards it that he begets in his pupil. He should, as far 
