•NRLF

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.

FROM THE LIBRARY OF

DR. JOSEPH LeCONTE.

GIFT OF MRS. LECONTE.

BIOLOGY

LIBRARY No.

G

REPRINTED FROM

THE AMERICAN FIELD,

iioago— New York
—London.]

Vol. XL1, »*. 26, to Vol. XL1I, No,

>

•

LECTURES ON BIOLOGY,

Delivered before the Catholic University of America

BY

DR. R. W. SHUFELDT.

1892.

lectures on

1. Its History and Present Domain.

II. Its Relations to Geology.

III. Its Value as a Study.

IV. Its Growth and Future Influence.

BY DR. R. W. SHUFEKDT.

1892.

A. .1*

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PREFf\GE.

As the writer states in the leading paragraph of the
first of the four lectures here offered, they were delivered
in response to an invitation'of the Right Reverend Rector
Bishop Keane, of the Catholic University of America,
and addressed to the faculty and students of that insti-
tution and an audience of ladies and gentlemen coming
principally from the city of Washington, D. C., and gath-
ered in the public lecture hall of the University, that seat
of learning being situated but a few miles from the afore-
said city.

The lectures were delivered in the order they are here
printed, and upon the four Thursday afternoons in the
month of January, 1892, between the hours of four and
five o'clock.

The author of them not being a Roman Catholic in any
sense of the word, nor even an acceptor of the fundamen-
tal requirements of the Christain faith, it was a matter
of no little surprise, and, it may be added, of gratifica-
tion, that he was the recipient of a call to undertake such
a task, coming, as it did, from such a
quarter. Surprise, from the fact that all history goes
to show that Catholicism has been — ever since the dawn
of learning — the open and avowed enemy of all science
and scientific progress: and gratification, principally due
to the evidence that, perhaps, the day was drawing nigh
when even Catholics were, at last, prepared not only to
listen to the teachings of science but to feel the truth of
them. My sense of gratification was the further intensi-

152986

11 PREFACE.

fled by the knowledge of the fact that the University had
completed all its plans to erect upon its broad grounds an
expensive and substantial college, equipped with faculty,
library and modern laboratories, in the halls of which
were to be taught to Catholic students the various
branches of the biological sciences.

Later in the present preface, however, it will be neces-
sary for me to show that the pleasure, to which reference
has just been made, did not remain an unmixed one
throughout all my relations with the University and her
Washington press exponents; and, as such subsequent
slight jars as did occur undoubtedly are significant and
have their lessons for us, they will be briefly dwelt upon
in the present connection, robbed of all passion and all
personality. So far as the lecturer was concerned he was
invariably treated with the utmost courtesy on all oc-
casions, by everyone having anything to do with the
University, and for that his sincere thanks are here
tendered. The first lecture was received by both faculty
and divinity students with very general and marked ap-
proval. Not so, however, the second one, and still less,
the remaining two. They were disapproved, and upon
the best authority the writer learned that he was roundly
denounced as a "heretic" and a "pagan," by one or two
of the students in their discussions of the lectures after
the same had been delivered. In one instance, it required
the action of the rector to quell the feeling;
especially in the case of one student, who openly ex-
pressed himself in words to this effect: "That had the
lecturer lived in a former century he would have been
burned as he well deserved to be." At the latter part of
the last lecture, one of the "Fathers," a member of the
faculty, was seen to place his fingers in his ears rather
than be corrupted by listening to my heresy. When one
thinks for a moment how the dreaded Inquisition dealt
with anatomists, "in a former century," such acts can,
by the writer, only be construed as the very greatest com-
pliments that possibly could have been meted out to him.

PREFACE. lit

Cardinal Gibbons personally requested that the lectures
be published in The Catholic Mirror, of Baltimore, Md.,
and the first two did appear in that paper. Only ap-
proved portions of tnem, however, were thus allowed to
see the light, and for some reason — not given— the last
two were not printed at all. Another paper, The
Catholic, News, of Washington, undertook to pub-
lish them in full, and, as in the case with the Mirror,
the first two did come out, though my remarks upon the
influence of the Inquisition on the labors of early writers
in anatomy were carefully suppressed. This newspaper
likewise was unable to publish the last two lectures, and,
after the appearance in its columns of the first one, its
editor was careful to preface each portion as it appeared
in part with the following caution, printed in brackets:
"The University assumes no responsibility for opinions
advanced by lecturers in the public courses."

After a careful second reading of my "opinions," I have
been totally unable to discover a single statement that
cannot be most amply sustained by the very best of evi-
dence, and doubt whether any fair-minded and intelligent
Roman Catholic can do otherwise.

So much for the history of these lectures, which are
now for the first time presented in full to my readers. In
most cases science has long been familiar with the facts
they set forth; not so, however, I fear, the vast hosts of
Catholics in this country, both laymen and clergy. So it
is to them, especially, that I dedicate my labors, with
the profound hope that they may read and comprehend
the truths I have endeavored to convey.

I.

Its History and Present Domain.

In 1891, when the eminent head of this University,
Bishop Keane, extended to me the distinguished honor of
an invitation to deliver during the course of the present
Winter four consecutive lectures, upon any subject that
I might be pleased to elect, I was, for a time, in a degree
doubtful in my mind as to what department of science I
should make application for material to meet so impor-
tant a duty.

Upon glancing at the subjects of lectures delivered from
this chair during former Winters by my most able prede-
cessors and upon inquiry, I discovered that the largest
attendances had rewarded those who had brought before
you some matter selected from man's civic
history or from his literature, and it was
urged upon me to adopt some similar coarse.
But the idea by no means coincided with my
own views in the premises, for, I argued, in the first
place, had the University any such plan in contemplation
it would never have asked a biologist to carry it out, how-
ever well he may have accomplished it; and, in the second
place, I felt I was called upon to face not only an audience
coming from one of the greatest scientific centers that
marks our civilization, but, in addition thereto, a faculty
and their pupils which represent an institution which
promises to be in its methods and aims one of the broad-
est seats of learning throughout all this broad land.
Under such circumstances it devolved upon me to select
for your consideration the craft to which I have devoted
more than twenty of the best working years of my life, and
still, in so selecting, would invite you into fields that not
only are pregnant with interest, but offer their full
measure of instruction, to say nothing of the influence
that instruction has upon all human pursuits and the
practical ends of everyday life.

When properly interpreted and applied, the science of

2 LECTURES

biology will meet what I have just claimed for it, and it
is to its study that I now invite your attention.

Biology, at the present time, has come to include that
group of sciences which have to deal with all those
phenomena which are exhibited on the part of living
matter, and, as so defined, is sharply marked off from
what may be termed the abiological sciences; as for ex-
ample astronomy, chemistry and physics.

A moment's thought will make it clear that such a
definition as the one just given will not only include the
study of man and his works, both past and present, but
likewise such special studies as, for instance, the science
of sociology and the science of psychology. The last
named, however, is usually considered but a department
of physiology, and the first but those phenomena ex-
hibited on the part of men in society, or, perhaps, I had
better say, that science which deals with human society.

As thus drawn then at the present time, the line of
demarcation beiween the biological and the abiological
sciences is quite a hard and fast one, lor, as yet, we are
ignorant of any link that connects living and not-living
matter.

Botany, in its widest sense, falls within the scope of
the biological sciences, as does most assuredly anatomy,
although in the case of the latter the student in that de-
partment deals mostly with dead matter or the cadaveric
remains of animals: such remains, however, once pos-
sessed life, which is more than we can say for such an
object, for instance, as a crystal or a meteorite.

Naturally, one may now ask, how about palaeontology?
that science which treats of the fossil remains of animals
inclosed within the crust of the earth or occurring upon
its surface, but in any event so closely linked with the
abiological science of geology.

Well, it is, also, strictly speaking, one of the biological
sciences; and, in my estimation, but one of the depart-
ments of morphology. Apart from vegetable morphology,
animal morphology includes not only palaeontology but
that entire group of studies which formerly were classi-
fied under anatomy and comparative anatomy; in other
words, animal morphology takes into consideration the
study of the form and structure of all animals, whether
dead, living, fossilized, or whether existing or extinct.
Human anatomy is then a subject that falls within the
purview of the morphologist.

All studies biological are more or less dependent upon
each other, as the history of all animated nature is ex-

ON BIOLOGY. 3

plicable through one great system of laws. Frequently
one of the abiological sciences is a most indispensable ad-
junct to the proper comprehension of one of the biological
sciences, and I can cite no better example than, the de-
pendence of physiology upon a thorough knowledge of
chemistry; and hardly, to a lesser extent, physics. For
instance, the study of the blood is an important chapter
in our work upon the investigation of the phenomena of
living matter; but the blood is made up of many chemical
constituents, and to understand the nature of its flow
through the vessels we must have recourse to the laws
demonstrated for us by the physicist.

The question may be raised here, by anyone who has
not followed the growth of science for the last quarter of
a century, nor heeded the teachings of her earlier liter-
ature for a very considerably longer period of time, that
it appears to vhem that the laborers in those fields have
recently very sadly mixed up by these apparently new
classifications, what was formerly very clear to all under
the time-honored title of the "Natural History Branches."
This is not the case, however, and I will now proceed to
show you that many of the terms I have been using are
by no means new, and even the word biology itself was
first used by Lamarck in one of his works published in
1801, and that eminent naturalist meant to convey by the
term almost exactly what we do at the present time —
nearly a century after he wrote it — that is, a discourse
upon living things or upon life.

Scientific thought, prior to the revival of learning in
Europe, was more or less completely under the sway of
the great impress made upon it by the immortal Greek
philosopher, Aristotle. Not that many other observers of
Nature and philosophical thinkers did not exist during
that long lapse of time, for that would not be true, but
what I do mean to imply is that however weighty were
the works of those others during the long sequence of
centuries before the revival of thought and learning,
the teachings in science as put forth by Aris-
totle powerfully dominated. Although Aristotle little
dreamed of the mutual dependence of the various depart-
ments of science, yet he was the first to place upon a sure
footing those methods of research which, during the ages
since his time, have led up to such a knowledge; in other
words, he was not only an original investigator but he
was a great comparer of those facts that were the fruits
of his investigations. He, in reality, established the first
school of comparative anatomy, or as it is now more

4 LECTURES

familiarly known to us, comparative morphology. He
applied those facts to the elucidation of zoological prob-
lems, and taught that sound zoological knowledge could
be gained only by a close study of nature, and a com-
prehension of natural laws.

When we come to think that this great philosopher of
ancient Greece flourished over twenty-two hundred years,
ago, it is really remarkable what a mass of facts he
brought to light and the extent to which he systematized
them. Yet it must be remembered that anatomy, as
known to Aristotle, was altogether too crude to be of any
service in directions other than I have just pointed out.
It was, for instance, too inexact for practical use in med-
icine and surgery, as was his physiology too erroneous to
be of any value in medical diagnosis. He had no concep-
tion whatever of the relations between chemistry and
physiology, any more than he saw the bearing of zoology
upon the medical art and the science of surgery.

Between one hundred and fifty and two hundred years
after Christ, Galen, the celebrated physician of Perga-
mus, had largely revised, and to no small degree extend-
ed, what had been done by Aristotle in the medical and
biological sciences. About the middle of the fourth cen-
tury the work was again recompiled by Oribasius, after
whose time the world's history passes into the Dark Ages,
a period when ignorance and barbarism ruled and all
scientific research was practically abandoned and forgot-
ten.

Zoology and botany were brought down to the com-
mencement of that epoch in the works of Pliny, who
flourished between three and four centuries after
the death of Aristotle. We are all more or less familiar
with his thirty-six volumes on natural history, consisting
as they do chiefly of a compilation of the labors of others
in the same field, who had lived during ages prior to his
day. The work of that time-honored naturalist, although
very valuable in some respects is, nevertheless, loaded
with absurd stories, myths, and impossible miracles. He
was entirely without any knowledge of even the very
simplest laws of classification, as applied to any branch
of learning in general, and to the natural sciences in par-
ticular. Still, quoting from so many, many authorities
as he did, his descriptions of animals, plants and miner-
als long remained standard, and profoundly influenced
the popular mind and its ideas about such subjects. So,
as a whole, his compilations, no doubt, with all their

ON BIOLOGY. 5

faults, present us with a view of the entire range of
science as it was understood at the time of his death.

After the revival of learning in Europe, scientific
thought was still powerfully tinctured with
the teachings of the schools of Aris-
totle, of Galen, of Pliny and of their prede-
cessors, and their less distinguished contemporaries.
Indeed, from that epoch which saw the fall of the
Roman Empire down to the time I have just mentioned,
or to the beginning of the Sixteenth Century, few were
those who contributed anything to the real progress of
the various sciences. Chief among them, perhaps, was
Albertus Magnus, who, born at Lavingen, in Suabia, in
1205, wrote a ''History of Animals," in twenty-one folio
volumes, which was published at Lyons in 1651. They
were almost entirely devoid of any original research, and
were otherwise quite Aristotelian in character. The
same strictures apply to the works of Paolo Giovio and of
Bock; the former, an Italian naturalist, wrote "De
Romanis Piscibus," which appeared in 1524, being dedi-
cated to the Cardinal of Bourbon; while the latter, gen-
erally known by the name of Tragus, published, in 1549,
a work entitled "KraeuterbucV von den vier Elementen,
Thieren, Yoegeln, und Fischen," which was stamped
with the same faults that characterized the productions
of the earlier writers upon the same subject.

Passing through the Sixteenth Century, we still find
the same servile building upon the Aristotelian basis,
the same ignorance of the affinities of animals and plants,
and the same desire to more or less clothe the natural
with the supernatural. Almost an entire absence of any
orderly arrangement or classification of facts or forms
prevailed, schemes so essential to the true progress of all
knowledge. Slow digestion, however, was still going on,
and during this century the groundwork laid down by
the fathers in zoology and science was preserved by in-
dustrious hands, and by minds which, in some instances,
worked remarkably well when we come to consider the
times of their flourishing. During this epoch Salviani
and Rondelet proved themselves to be no mean ichthy-
ologists, who, with the physician Belon, of
France, really laid the cornerstone of the modern
science of ichthyology. It is rather a remarkable
fact that these three naturalists, working in the same
fields and so thoroughly independent of each other,
should have all flourished about the same time— that is,
between 1553 and 1558. About the same time Conrad

G LECTURES

Gesner, who was born at Zurich, in 1516, was engaged
upon his principal work, the "Historia Naturalis Ani-
malium." In the four folio volumes of that treatise we
but again see a series of illy selected extracts from the
works of Aristotle, Pliny, and ^Elian, the latter who
wrote, in Greek, a "History of Animals," toward the
close of the Second Century. Hardly any original mat-
ter was added, and his engravings were rude and unreli-
able, being regarded now more in the light of objects of
curiosity rather than any value being attached to them
as positive contributions to science.

One other name is deserving of mention, as repre-
senting this period, and I refer to that laborious
naturalist, Ulysses Aldrovani, one of the professors
of Bologna, who was born in that city, in 1527, and died
early in the next century. He was of noble birth, a
zealous collector, and published some works upon birds
and one upon insects. Other folio volumes appeared after
his death. He was a builder upon the lines laid down by
Gesner, from whom he borrowed extensively, although
he furthered the science to some extent by his own obser-
vations, thus adding his mite to the then slowly increas- •
ing stock of human knowledge of the natural sciences.

So much, then, for the progress that men had made in
those subjects at the close of the sixteenth cemury. Anat-
omy, in so far as it took into consideration the structure
of man and the vertebrates below him, had been far
more fortunate during the same epoch. In the Italian
school, strongest at Bologna, it grew as it did in other
countries where the science was cultivated out of the
teachings of Galen. Nevertheless, Mondino, a teacher in
Bologna, and having every claim to being the father of
modern anatomy, as early as 1315 dissected specimens of
the human subject and demonstrated the position of
many structures upon the bodies of two females. His
descriptions, however, were much corrupted by ideas
derived from the Arabian writers.

A most zealous promoter of anatomical science fol-
lowed in Italy at the birth of the Sixteenth Century.
This was James Berenger, who declared that he had dis-
sected during his career over one hundred human bodies.
He most assuredly made good use of them, for his contri-
butions to a better knowledge of the anatomy of man
were of the most substantial character, and many of his
descriptions are distinguished for their great accuracy
and minuteness. As compared with Italy, France made
at first but tardy progress in anatomy, and a hundred

ON BIOLOGY. 7

years after Mondino had made his brilliant demonstra-
tions, direct from the human subject, Dubois, Fernei and
Etienne, of the French school, were still almost blindly
following the ancient writings of Galen, and using only
the bodies of the lower animals for material. But what
is still more strange, those Frenchmen were, apparently,
entirely ignorant of all the excellent work that had been
accomplished by their Italian predecessors in the science.

But this torpor was not destined to remain long upon a
nation which subsequently gave birth to such powerful
lights, both in natural science and anatomy. The young
Fleming, Andrew Vesalius, was the first to enter the
French arena, and throwing off the Galenian yoke, about
the middle of the Sixteenth Century, he presented the
learned world with a truly marvelous work upon anatomy,
his dissections being all original and made both upon
men, women, children and the lower animals. His en-
gravings were exquisite, and he at once rose high in the
estimation of his cotemporaries. The labors of Versalius
greatly enhanced the claims of anatomy to a science, and
those claims gained a still firmer foothold through the
researches along the same lines made by others in the
school of Bologna and elsewhere, in Italy, who soon fol-
lowed him. I refer to the brilliant works of Bartholomeo
Eustachi, of Columbus, of Fallopius, of Ingrassi^s, of
Aranzi, of Variolus, and of Fabricius. Spain gave us
Servetus, and England, the immortal Harvey, about this
time.

What I have told you thus far about the growth of the
natural sciences and of anatomy will serve as an example
to show how other sciences grew out of the labors of the
ancients, and came to be what they were in the
Sixteenth Century. The career of physiology was more
or less linked to that of anatomy, while botany and some
of the other departments developed much in the same
manner as did the last named science.

The dawn of better days had now appeared in Europe;
human knowledge was again awakening into life; the
taste for learning was once more being appreciated, and in
defiance of persecution, the faggot and the Inquisition,
scientific culture had taken on a career which, in all
probability, is destined not to be checked again in the
history of humanity in time to come.

Just here it is important to observe the interesting fact,
that the scientific writers, down to the time of the decline
of the Roman Empire, rarely or never confined their obser-
vations to any single department, but, on the contrary,

8 LECTURES

owing to the then limited knowledge of the age, passed
everything known to their time in such fields in review.
Aristotle was such an one as we have seen, and so like-
wise were Pliny the Elder and Galen. Practically it may
be said they employed no classification, and they were
ignorant alike of the mutual affinities and relation of
things, as they were of any rational scheme of the
material world.

At the revival of learning much of this had changed,
and notwithstanding men wrote in science with their
minds fettered by the works and teachings of their an-
cient predecessors, yet a decided step in advance had
become evident, inasmuch as men occasionally confined
themselves to special departments, such as zoology, anat-
omy, botany and the like. Zoologists, as we have seen,
however, consulted Aristotle far more often than they did
Nature, and anatomists more frequently taught from the
pages of Galen than they did from the only safe guide,
the human cadaver, upon the dissecting table. All ex-
isting forms were supposed to have been created within a
comparatively recent time, and no species had materially
changed since the date of that creation. Where any
notion of the affinities of species of animals inhabiting
the earth existed at all, such notions were of the vaguest
nature imaginable. Classification, consequently, in their
works simply resolved itself into the alphabetical ar-
rangement of the forms described. The love of incorpo-
rating into works of science descriptions of the marvel-
ous and the mythical prevailed almost everywhere. In
those times, too, man was studied as one
thing and Nature was studied as another, and
the two were considered to be antagonistic to each other;
indeed, a sort of essential antithesis existed between
them, which even in those early days of history gave rise
to some puzzling speculations. As crude, however, as
was the then knowledge of Nature and the material
scheme of things, the foundations, nevertheless, had
been lain, and that, too, in very solid masonry, for a
more or less systematic gathering of facts. That struc-
ture is by no means completed at the present time, not-
withstanding the laborers upon it have been increased
many, many thousand fold.

Time passed on and the number of those who were in-
terested in the various sciences gradually increased. In
1651 Thomas Hobbes wrote: "The register of knowledge
of fact is called history. Whereof there be two sorts,
one called natural history, which is the history of such

ON BIOLOGY. 9

facts or effects of Nature as have no dependence on man's
will; such as are the histories of metais, plants, animals,
regions, and the like. The other is civil history, which
is the history of the voluntary actions of men in Com-
monwealths."

From these words it will be seen that at least one good
thinker of the middle of the Seventeenth Century, recog-
nized the distinction between what soon came to be desig-
nated as natural history, and civil history. A few years
afterward, when Newton's great work, the "Principia,"
appeared, other lines commenced to be drawn, and It
dawned upon men that certain of the sciences especially
required the application of mathematics in their treat-
ment, as was the case in physics, astronomy, and other
branches. As these developed they naturally became
differentiated from those which took into consideration
the phenomena of Nature, and especially demanded the
exercise of the observational powers of men. Again, other
departments of human knowledge were in those days
arrayed in another series, depending upon the fact whether
the phenomena they presented for consideration were sus-
ceptible of explanation or were dealt with by experimental
methods or fell within the treatment of both. Thus the
old science spoken of as "natural philosophy," was
gradually drawn away from astronomy and chemistry
began to occupy a field of its own. It was thus, as time
went on, that the persons designated as "naturalists"
were those . who devoted themselves to the study of the
history of plants and of animals, to physical geography,
mineralogy and geology, and those branches were con-
sidered to constitute "natural history." As thus defined,
however, it will at once be clear to you that natural
history meant to Aristotle and to Buffon two widely
different things; the latter understood it to mean pre-
cisely what I have just given you. Indeed, to some ex-
tent, at least, the meaning which Buffon attached to
natural history has endured down to our time, and no
doubt not a few of those of my audience can
well remember in their boyhood days how it
fell to the lot of one of the professors in
college to assume the duties of the Chair of Natural His-
tory, and such a person was designated as the Professor
of Natural History, and essayed to instruct his class in
not only the history of plants and animals but in miner-
alogy and the entire field of geology besides. So far as I
am aware, we never hear of a professor of natural history
in any of the leading universities or colleges of this coun-

10 LECTURES

try at the present day, for the reason that the marvelous
progress that science has made in this century has de-
manded a still further division of labor in such fields.
Gradually both geology and mineralogy came to occupy
their own legitimate spheres, and the geologists and the
mineralogists ceased at last to be classed with the natur-
alists.

Glancing backward again, from this period, we find
that in due time men outgrew the practice of making
mere alphabetical lists of the animals they studied and re-
cording random notes about them. Something more was
demanded, for work of that nature could not always sat-
isfy the orderly and. the growing mind of the age. It
was knowledge to be sure, but it was not classified knowl-
edge, nor did it make any attempt to solve the relations of
the things described. It rapidly began to dawn upon
men that there were but few forms in existence, compar-
atively, that had not their affines, the affinity shown, be-
ing more or less near. For example, it was appreciated
that such forms as the wolf, the hyena, the fox, and the
dog were in some way or the other related to each other
and were easily distinguished from some other distinct
group, as one represented by the lion, the tiger, the puma,
the cat, the ocelot, and so on. These same principles be-
came also evident in botany, and were duly applied there
as they were in other scientific departments.
Botany showed especial early development owing
to its relation to medicine, and the additional
inducement to study it to that end. Many of
the herbs were valuable as articles of the materia
medica, and early in the Seventeenth Century the number
of working botanists, it is said, far outnumbered the
zoologists. Among the first of these latter who resorted
to a classification of the forms he studied, was that
erratic Dutch naturalist, John Swammerdam, who
was born at Amsterdam in February, 1637.
His numerous works appeared from time to
time during the latter part of the century in which he
lived. His methods of classification were best seen in his
entomological researches, and it will at once be observed
by those at all familiar with the subject that his ideas
in those premises are very different from the correspond-
ing ones entertained by those engaged in the classifi-
cation of insects in our own day. Swammerdam divided
all insects into four classes, based upon the development
of the various kinds as understood by him. He took
Into consideration the condition of the species immedi-

ON BIOLOGY. 11

ately after its birth, as well as its various metamorphoses
afterward.

In his first class he placed the spiders and other species
which upon hatching have a form more or less like the
parent form. In this group he also included the slugs,
and leeches, which, of course, are not insects at all. A
second class included the grasshoppers and their kind, or,
as he points out, those insects which have six feet upon
being born and at a later period shed that covering be-
neath which the future wings are hidden. He was
also struck by the jumping power of this class. Thirdly,
he had a class for the caterpillars, which, as we know,
are hatched as worms and later assume the various
chrysalis forms, and still later emerge as moths and but-
terflies and their allies. Lastly, or in his fourth class,
he placed such insects as the common fly, which emerge
as worms upon hatching from the egg, and later assume
a pupa stage enveloped in an investing shell of their own,
which protects them until they take on the winged state.

Swammerdam in many respects was a remarkable man;
his personal history forms one of the most interesting
pages on the growth and development of zoological
science. Toward the close of his life, he carried his
studies to such an excess as to utterly ruin his otherwise
powerful constitution; he then became a fanatic in relig-
ion, careless of his work and its results, and, finally, died
a victim apparently of melancholia brought on by his
unhealthy religious broodings. We must believe that
somewhat earlier in his life, or about 1674, these were
much aggravated by the control over his mind which had
been gained by that notable mystic, Antoinette Bourignon,
a woman whose religious ideas and professions were by
no means carried out in her daily course of conduct.

In England, Sir Hans Sloane and Jno. Ray, during the
latter part of the Seventeenth and early part of the
Eighteenth Centuries, accomplished a great
deal to place the natural sciences upon the
most substantial footing. Ray especially was a
very learned man, and a voluminous writer upon sub-
jects connected with his chosen profession. With two or
three favored pupils he traveled much over Europe, and
made some very admirable and extensive collections in
animals and plants, which were brought back to England
to be worked up at his leisure. Ray also did much
toward classifying the forms he studied, and as a rule
his terse and classical descriptions were excellent, which
same favorable criticism, however, cannot be extended to

12 [LECTURES

his figures and plates which illustrated them. We musi
remember, though, that the time had not yet arrived
when ease, grace, artistic skill and accuracy were thrown
into zoological illustrations. In birds, the world had to
wait for Audubon to demonstrate the manner in which
that was to be accomplished.

Sir Hans Sloane, who was born in Ireland in April,
1660, and died at Chelsea early in January, 1752, was a
stanch promoter of the cause of science. He is espe-
cially to be remembered as, after his death, his enormous
private collections of objects in natural history formed
the nucleus from which the British Museum afterward
developed and grew.

The year 1683 produced also a remarkable man in
France, the genius of whose work reaches down to the
present time. This was Rene Antoine Ferchault de
Reaumur, a man who not only greatly advanced the
science of biology but in addition made a powerful im-
press upon nearly every other branch of learning of his
day. As you well know he invented an admirable scale
for one of the styles of thermometers still in use in many
parts of the world. Reaumur completed and published
in 6 volumes a work upon insects, and left several others
incomplete and unpublished, which is very much
to be regretted as much of his work is very valuable.
Some of his philosophy in those memoirs would
hardly hold good at the present day. In
speaking of insects, he says: "The number of
observations necessary for a tolerably complete history of
so many minute animals is prodigious. When one re-
flects on all that an accomplished botanist ought to know,
it is enough to frighten him. His memory is loaded with
the names of twelve or thirteen thousand plants, and he
is expected to be able to recall on occasion the image of
any one of them. There is, perhaps, none of these plants
that has not insects peculiar to itself; and some trees,
such as the oak, give substance to several hundreds of
different species. And, after all, how many are there
that do not live on plants! How many species that de-
vour others! How many that live at the expense of
larger animals, on which they feed continually! How
many species are there, some of which pass the greater
part of their time in water, while others pass it entirely
there! The immensity of Nature's works is nowhere
more apparent than in the prodigious multiplicity
of these species of little animals." He then
proceeds to show the utter impossibility of man ever

ON BIOLOGY 13

gaining even a modicum of knowledge of a subject so
vast, and argues the necessity of simply knowing the
principal genera and the leading or characteristic species
in each genus. He adds: "Although we would greatly re-
strict the limits of the study, there are persons who will
think them still too wide; there are even some who con-
sider all knowledge of this part of natural history as use-
less, and who unhesitatingly pronounce it a frivolous
amusement. We are equally willing that these pursuits
should be regarded as amusements, that is, as studies
which, so far from being troublesome, afford pleasure to
the person who- engages in them. They do more, they
necessarily raise the mind to admire the Author of so
many wonders. Ought we to be ashamed of ranking
among our occupations observation and researches, of
which ihe object is an acquaintance with the works on
which the Supreme Being has displayed a boundless wis-
dom, and varied to such a degree? Natural history is
the history of his works; nor is there any demonstration
of his existence more intelligible to all men than that
which it furnishes."

It is nearly a century and a half ago since Reaumur
published these views, and we can well imagine what his
surprise would be were it possible for him to stand in our
midst to-day. Not only have the botanists since his time
added many, many thousands of new species of plants to
the lists, but the entomologists have simply increased to
an enormous extent our knowledge of the insect world.
We have in the neighborhood of one million species
described, and propose to describe every new form that
comes to hand. Nor is this all, for the structure of these
minute creatures is being exhaustively studied in all direc-
tions by many minds and many microscopes; their habits
are being closely observed and recorded; their sex varia-
tions and metamorphoses determined; the insect parasites
upon insects and uoon other animals are receiving con-
tinuously the same kind of study. Out of all this work is
growing an enormous literature, but more than that the
government in this country has taken the matter wisely
in hand, and an annual appropriation supports a staff of
eminent workers who constitute our Bureau of Economic
Entomology, and I am quite confident that even Reau-
mur, were his eyes opened, would not consider their
labors in the light of a "frivolous amusement," and we
are well aware that the highly valuable investigations of
the staff of workers, to whom reference has been made, is
having the excellent and practical result of being of the

14 LECTURES

utmost importance to horticulturalists the world over,
wherever their works have come known and appre-
ciated. Moreover their published accounts of the habits
and development of insects are of value in no end of other
ways, and explain many practical and theoretical ques-
tions.

To return now to the middle of the Seventeenth Cen-
tury, we find that meanwhile an ever-increasing host of
workers in the service of anotomy have attained to many
glorious results. Through the labors of Asellius, Glisson,
Jolyffe, the Englishmen, and Rudbeck, the Swede (the
last two who divided honors upon the distinction between
the lacteals and the lymphatics), Willis, who carefully
studied the nervous system, and Malpighi, who devoted
himself principally to histology, and to Steno, Ruysch,
Swammerdam, who has already been noticed, and to a
hundred others the very refinements of anatomical re-
searches were being then annually published. A com-
plete knowledge of man's structure was rapidly being
gotten at; and, what is fully as important, a very general
comparative knowledge of the morphology of many other
animals was likewise having a powerful light thrown
upon it, and with the effect of very materially
elaborating \vhat was already known in such fields.
It was through these latter studies, supplemented as
they were by the descriptions of mammals by the natural-
ists of the time, that the science of mammalogy was kept
fully abreast the other departments of natural history.
Comparative physiology, ichthyology, invertebrate
zoology, herpetology, and ornithology were also advanced
by more or less similar methods, though no one of them
by any means ever in the same degree. Palaeontology, or
the knowledge of the fossil remains of animals, at first
grew but slowly, and it has only been within the last fifty
years that it has been brought up into line with the other
sciences, as they are understood at the present day, and
made its influence most powerfully felt.

By the middle of the Eighteenth Century great interest
was evidenced in travel and exploration, and many
countries were being explored by Europeans prompted by
a variety of motives. Some went abroad from the sheer
love of adventure; some sought wealth and fame;
some explored in the interest of science and
geography; while others made up the sight-
seers. It all tended, however, to produce in
the main very good results and was especially favorable
to the growth of all the natural sciences. One very im-

ON BIOLOGY. 15

portant branch was benefited by it, and one that hitherto
had not been much developed, and that was the knowl-
edge of the geographical distribution of animals, a most
important subject, as we shall hereafter see. Material
now, from all quarters of the globe, in the shape of plants,
animals, and similar objects of interest came in abun-
dance to Europe, where it poured into the museums or en-
riched the collections of universities or those of private
individuals.

The age was ripe for a master mind; some great, all-
absorbing intellect to encompass and digest this incoming
store of wealth; to arrange, describe and classify it in due
and orderly manner; in that it might come to be a true
and living part of human knowledge, and capable of be-
ing comprehended, made useful, studied and appreciated.

When Nature is prepared to inaugurate another epoch,
•to turn over as it were another page in the history of the
world, it would seem that one of sufficient strength is in-
variably forthcoming to perform the operation, and such
an individual arose in the middle of the last century, to
do the realm of nature that service. It proved to be
Carl Von Linne, or, as he is better known to English ears,
Charles Linnaeus. This master genius was born at
Rashult, in the province of Smaland, Sweden, in the
latter part of May, 1707, and the term of his life spanned
seventy-one years. Mr. Jackson, of the London Linnaean
Society, tersely expressed the influence that Linne's per-
sonal magnetism, public lectures, teachings, and his one
hundred and eighty published books and papers had
upon natural science, when he said: "He found biology
a chaos; he left it a cosmos." With him classification
was a passion, and the description of natural objects a
pastime that occupied every moment of his thoughts.
To botany he gave the natural system of classification, or
a classification based upon a knowledge of the structure
of plants, their flowers and fruits. This, his original
scheme, has come down to us through a century and a
half of time, in practically the same principle as when it
left his hands. He revolutionized the entire system of
nomenclature by his use of generic and specific names
and by the employment of the higher groups used in
taxonomy. Linnaeus' mind, however, appreciated prob-
ably little or nothing of what a species really is, or what
species are now known to be in the light of modern re-
search. To him a species was an immutable integer;
when once found and properly described it was good for
all time, as it was good as an expression of what that

16 LECTURES

form had been since It came into existence Genera con-
sisted in groups of such species, defined by their
generic characters. A'ca impennis was one species
of auk, and Alca torda another, two species
of auks belonging to the genus Alca — or, again, in mam-
mals, we find the order Cete, containing the whales;
within this order the genus Balcena, created for the
whales proper, of which he duly described four species.
Such simple and far-reaching innovations; such effective
machinery made itself felt in comparatively a very short
space of time in every biological laboratory and study,
either public or private, throughout the then learned
world.

Linnseus's greatest achievement was his "Systema
Naturae," of which there have been numerous editions.
In it, in the manner I have described, he swept over and
passed in review in orderly classification all the depart-
ments of natural history as they were recognized in his
time. Its publication gave an enormous impulse to the
progress of science along the lines indicated. But this
great man was mortal, and he possessed the failing as has
every naturalist both before and since his time, of making
mistakes, and Linnaeus made a great many of them. Mis-
takes, however, have their uses, even in biology, and
from their correction by future laborers much addi-
tional information and research is apt to accrue. The
vast majority of the Linnsean errors have been rectified in
our day. Macgillivray, who has written a very good
biography of the immortal Swede, said: "All systems
flourish and fade. The mineralogy of Linnaeus has per-
ished; his zoology, cut down to the root, has sent forth a
profusion of luxuriant shoots; and although his botany
maintains as yet a strong claim upon the admiration of
the lovers of Nature, a fairer plant has sprung up beside
it which promises a richer harvest of golden fruits. But
should the period ever arrive when all that belonged to
him of mere system and technicology shall be obliterated,
he will not the less be remembered as a bright luminary
in the dark hemisphere of natural science, which served
for a time to throw a useful light around, and led ob-
servers to surer paths of information than had previously
been known."

These words, from the pen of the Scotch naturalist,
from whom I have quoted them, were printed in 1834.
I give you the date simply to show the trend of thought
of some naturalists, and Macgillivray was a good one,
over fifty years ago, upon such subjects.

ON BIOLOGY. 17

We must not, however, measure the growth of the nat-
ural sciences too closely by the arbitrary scale of the cen-
tury, which is nothing more than a human estimate
invented for man's convenience in reckoning time. Bi-
ology has been a natural growth, like anything else, at
times being rapid and luxuriant and again sluggish and
uncertain, but ever independent of either B. C. or A. D.,
or any other time-gauge of our devising. When at any
stage in the course of this growth it received into its
ranks the right kind of recruits, these latter came pre-
armed with the knowledge of much that had been done
before their joining; and in taking up the torches
of their predecessors, in their various spheres of action,
they nearly always succeeded in still further illuminat-
ing the conquered domain, and by their excursions into
the unknown added additional territory. Very often the
workers along some line, or upon a number of lines, have
been engaged for great lengths of time in simply gather-
ing in harvests of material and rendering descriptive ac-
counts of the same. Very little generalization is done;
and evidently without design the years roll by for a time,
and the entire corps of the world's naturalists appear to
have run Into an army of fact gatherers. Facts are
seized up and accumulated from all quarters, and are of
the most varied nature. Sometimes, from their very
remoteness from any apparent utilitarian ends, they for
the time have been regarded by many as practically val-
ueless; but we are bravely getting over such views of
any kind of true knowledge, for our experiences are
teaching us now that every real fact discovered and
comprehended far from being useless is sure some day to
have its place found for it in the grand structure of
human understanding of the scheme of the universe.
Frequently such facts build up a philosophy for one age,
which is more than likely to become the common sense
of the next succeeding one. Explorers, traders in foreign
seas, material gatherers and the describers of museum
material, zoological artists and popular writers on natural
history, together with here and there occasionally a
stronger hand and more far reaching researches, were a
long, long time filling the biological magazine for some
great digester of the whole, some great mind and hand to
sum up in orderly arrangement the grand total of results
attained; to make an epoch; to spread a broad, solid base
for the succeeding host of investigators to rest upon. We
have already seen how a Linnaeus arose, nearly two hun-
dred years ago, as the transcendent systematizer of the

18 LECTURES

great mass of information that had been accumulating to
his hand; and I doubt not even Aristotle, the ancient sage
of the peripatetic school in Greece, over 2,000 years ago,
had his material and fact; and we may add, his myth col-
lectors, whose life histories dip far back into the pre-tradi-
tional times of man's career upon earth, and into ages of
which we have no history.

It can now be appreciated that ninety odd years ago an
enormous mass of material and facts were again, and had
been, accumulating since the Linnaean period; and, in
half a century thereafter, a Charles Darwin came upon
the scene to handle them as a whole and in due course to
flash to the world their significance.

We are now in a position to glance at some of the work
that was being done at about the beginning of the present
century, and to pass in review some of the ideas enter-
tained by the biological writers of that time. It was
nearly sixty years prior to the appearance of Darwin's
"Origin of Species," and yet Erasmus Darwin, his dis-
tinguished father, in his very interesting work, "The
Temple of Nature, or, the Origin of Society" (a copy of
which I have in my library and which was published in
Baltimore, in IbOt), says in the first Canto, on the Pro-
duction of Life;

"Organic life beneath the shoreless waves
Was born, and nurs'd in Ocean's pearly caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin, and feet, and wing."

In an explanatory footnote to these lines he is careful
to say: "The earth was originally covered with water,
as appears from some of its highest mountains consisting
of shells connected together by a solution of part of them,
as the limestone rocks of the Alps;" (so much from
"Ferber's Travels," to which the author of the "Temple
of Nature" adds: "It must be therefore concluded that
animal life began beneath the sea."

It is unnecessary to point out in this place the double
fallacy in this theory, for, lhanks to our geologists, the
knowledge of the mode of the formation of mountains is
now well understood, and the occurrence in them of
marine shells easily explained. Still Erasmus Darwin's
notions of the origin of life are far in advance of the

ON BIOLOGY. 19

ideas of John Milton on the same subject who wrote in
his "Paradise Lost" somewhere about 1667,

"The sixth, and of creation last, arose

With evening harps and matin, when God said,

'Let the earth bring forth soul living in her kind,

Cattle and creeping things, and beast of the earth,

Each in their kind!' The earth obeyed, and, straight

Opening her fertile womb, teemed at a birth

Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms,

Limbed and full grown. Out of the ground uprose,

As from his lair, the wild beast, where he wons

In forest wild, in thicket, brake or den;

Among the trees in pairs they rose, they walked;

The cattle in the fields and meadows green;

Those rare and solitary; these in flocks

Pasturing at once, and in broad herds upsprung.

The grassy clods now calved; now half appears

The tawny lion, pawing to get free

His hinder parts — then springs, as broke from bonds,

And rampant shakes his brinded mane; the ounce,

The libbard, and the tiger, as the mole

Rising, the crumbled earth above them threw

In hillocks; the swift stag from underground

Bore up his branching head; scarce from his mold

Behometh, biggest born of earth, upheaved

His vastness; fleeced the flocks and bleating rose

As plants; ambiguous between sea and land,

The river-horse and scaly crocodile,

At once came forth whatever creeps the ground,

Insect or worm."

I have already told you that it was about 1801, the
celebrated French naturalist, Lamarck, was the first to
use the word Biology; this you will see was about the
time that Erasmus Darwin published his "Temple of
Nature;" and, Lamarck, in his "Philosophic Zoologique,"
remarks: "Everything which Nature has caused indi-
viduals to acquire or lose by the influence of the circum-
stances to which their race is long exposed, and, conse-
quently, by the influence of the predominant employment
of such organ, or its constant disuse, she preserves by
generation to the new individuals proceeding from them,
provided that the changes are common to the two sexes, or
to those which have produced these new individual.'*
(i, 235). The significance of these words must be clear to
all, and yet they were written nearly sixty years before
Charles Darwin published his "Origin of Species," and

20 LECTURES

very well show the trend biologic philosophy was takin ?
in some directions at the very beginning of the present
century.

It is very important to trace back, here and there first
glimmerings as light that illuminate such laws, and take
cognizance of their source, for the idea is far too prev-
alent, even yet, that the demonstration of the origin of
organic life in this world arose in any one man's mind.
That demonstration had been a growing one for many
years prior to 1859, and has come up in the same way
that other biologic truths have come up. And, in this
connection, you will remember that even as early as
Cuvier's time, that great savant wrote of the eminent
French naturalist, Buffon, that he had "the merit of hav-
ing been the first to point out clearly that the actual con-
dition of the globe is the result of a succession of changes,
of which we can find the evidences to-day; and it is he
who first drew the observation of all investigators to the
phenomena by which these changes can be unraveled."
Buffon's work on natural history commenced to be
put forth in 1749. But we must pass again, after this
momentary digression, to those biologists who wrote
fifty years subsequent to the date I have just mentioned.
I will refer, however, to but a few. In human anatomy,
works comparable with the modern system of treating
the subject appeared first rather less than a century ago.
The second or German edition, of the work on anatomy, by
Sommering,inaugurated a new era in this branch of human
knowledge, for that eminent authority grasped the sub-
ject in a most masterly manner, and his published labors
are characterized by marked accuracy, philosophical ar-
rangement, and by evidences of exhaustive research. In
1801 the French philosopher, Bichat, brought out in four
octavo volumes an equally excellent treatise upon human
anatomy, and both he and Sommering greatly advanced
the knowledge of physiology. These two great men
were the center lights of the French and German schools
at the time they flourished. About each were workers
in the two countries of scarcely less celebrity, while in
Great Britain John Gordon, Bell, the third Munro, Jones,
Quain, and others carried the subject fully up to the
time. Great precision was now being gained by the use
of the microscope and other instruments ensuring more
accurate results in dissecting. Means of more extensive
criticism and reviews reacted most beneficially, and
many special treatises rapidly appeared in Germany,

ON BIOLOGY. 21

England, France, Italy, and elsewhere on the continent
In wonderful profusion.

Morphology of vertebrates, other than man, was also
advanced most satisfactorily, and during the first thirty
years of this century a comprehension of the structure,
organization, physiology and composition of all organic
forms was fairly established, and as the years swept by
they were marked by an ever-increasing host of investi-
gators of all those departments, and by a most remark-
able giving-to-the-world of a perfect flood of literature
upon every branch of biology; not only those I
have just mentioned but also botany, palaeontology,
invertebrate zoology, man and all that refers to or con-
cerns him, pathology and psychology. This great wave
of intellectual activity swells up to the present hour
with a powerful augmentation of its force, propelled as it
is by the minds of an army of restless investigators, that
annually enlist a greater and a greater number of re-
cruits. So long, indeed, is this list of honored names,
that even to mention those who have distinguished them-
selves in the various departments of biology during the
time since the commencement of the present century
would be absolutely impracticable, as that list, with
even a reference to the principal works in each case,
would fill several goodly volumes.

What have been some of the results of all this study
and investigation? They are not far to seek, but, as it
is my intention to revert to some of them more fully later
in the present course of lectures, only a few of
the main ones will be named in this connec-
tion. We saw that early in the history of the
biological sciences men but very slightly appreciated
either the unity of organization as it exists among plants
on the one hand, and animals on the other, or were
they scarcely at all aware of the mutual relations of the
biological sciences. Now modern science and research,
in the first place, has brought about a very thorough real-
ization of the interdependence of her various natural
divisions; and in the second place, the general uniformity
in the plan of structure of all animated beings is now
well known.

Palaeontology and the microscope are largely respon-
sible for these results; the former demonstrating the rela-
tions of living things in geologic time, and the latter bring-
ing to light the agreement in kind of the few elements
or tissues throughout animated nature and out of which
all organic forms are composed and built up.

22 ' • • LECTURES

Attention was first turned toward the question
of the unity of plan in the case of the verte-
brata by the poet Goethe, who, early in the present cen-
tury pointed out the fact that the'premaxillary bone or
that element of the skull which supports the upper
incisor teeth, occurring, as it probably does in all back-
boned animals, should occur in man. This he finally
demonstrated to be true, and its demonstration, taken in
connection with the theory of Oken on the vertebrated
nature of the entire skull, a lecture given by that trans-
cendent anatomist at a time when Goethe was present,
turned the attention of all leading anatomists of the
time to making comparative studies of animals, often
with the view of elucidating some obscure structure in
the organization of man. Since the time of which I
speak comparative morphologists have made, without
any exaggeration, thousands upon thousands of such com-
parisons, and the truth of the unity of plan of structure
among the vertebrata is as well established as is the form
of the earth. Botanists find that essentially the same holds
true in the vegetable world. So that were one to fully
study any single well-chosen plant, in all
its details, he would practically possess the
key to the knowledge of the morphology
of plants, both living and extinct. So also for the
physiology of plants; so also for the physiology of animals,
a full comprehension of physiologic laws, as exemplified
in a tortoise, are found to obtain with the same exactitude
in an elephant. In other words it has come to be known
that certain broad laws concerning such matters possess a
general application throughout both the vegetable and
animal kingdom.

Another great subject has come to be very largely
understood through the labors of the biologists of this
century, and that is the geographical distribution of
plants and animals, both for those now existing and for
those which existed during former ages of the world but
are now extinct. This is a very important field as we
shall hereafter see.

Still another vast problem of prime importance has
been elaborated within the last hundred years, and
to it the millions of facts drawn from all departments
of biology lend substantial support. I refer to the
doctrine of the generation of living beinars; the prob-
able origin of life upon the globe; the development of
the individual, the development of the triba; the history
of animals and plants throughout all time; and, finally, a

ON BIOLOGY. 23

very general comprehension of the laws and factors of
this doctrine considered in its entirety. When we come
to search for the physical basis in the economy of any
living thing in the whole world, it invariably results in
the discovery of an apparently structureless mass, to
which the name of protoplasm has been given. This
fundamental form of all life; this morphological unit is
the material, in so far as our present knowledge carries
us, from which every organ, however complex or how-
ever high in the scale of organization in either the animal
or vegetable kingdom, is built up. Among some of the
lowest forms of existing life we find that, structurally,
they are but slightly advanced beyond this protoplasmic
matter; whereas in man or any other complex animal,
his system is found to be made up of
organs and tissues, which organs and tis-
sues are in turn found to be simply an aggregation of
protoplasmic cells, that present various modifications in
form, which latter takes on an internal structureless
part and an external part which appears to be more defi-
nitely constituted. Further, it is apparent that this liv-
ing matter, considered in its simple state, holds a definite
position in space and in time; it may be acted upon by
certain forces, which result in the production in it of cer-
tain internal changes or causes it to modify external ob-
jects, which in turn may modify it. So that, finally, its
very form, or the place it occupies, or what it is capable
of doing are controlled by the effects of certain causes.

Our ablest biologists then subdivide the entire subject
of biology into four parts, that is, into morphology, dis-
tribution, physiology and aetiology.

As I have already pointed out, under morphology we
take into consideration both the minute and gross anat-
omy of all living forms, together with their development.
Such knowledge is made comparative, and taxonomy or
classification flows from it as a natural result.

Under distribution we arrange all the facts that bear
upon the occurrence of living forms over the surface of
the globe, and the laws that appear to govern it, as well
as the geographical occurrence of animals and plants
during former geological epochs of the earth's history.
Under physiology we have to deal with the functions
of living matter as seen in the representatives of the animal
and vegetable worlds, of the function of an organ of any
living thing as a whole, and the functions of the mor-
phological units or cells of which any living thing is
composed. Secondly, of the various modes of reproduo-

24 LECTURES

tion of animals and plants, and the laws that control
their existence. Thirdly, of the question of the hered-
itary transmission of characters and the laws that
operate in producing variation in those characters, both
in consecutive and non-consecutive generations.
Psychology and sociology are also legitimate branches of
this subdivison.

Finally, under aetiology we are concerned with the
questions of, first, the probable origin of life upon the
earth, and with the causes of the phenomena of the
same. In the second place, with the causes of the vari-
ations presented on the part of animals- and plants in
time, as well as the history and causes of the evolvement
of living forms and the laws pertaining thereto. The
phenomena of morphology, physiology, and distribution
are based upon known facts, whereas much that aetiology
has to do with, is speculative, though often amounting
to a degree of probability bordering upon absolute cer-
tainty, inasmuch as it is in complete harmony with and
renders full explanation of many of the known phenom-
ena of the three first-mentioned grand subdivisions of
biology.

Thus you will see how our science has grown and de-
veloped, and the manner in which the subject presents
itself to the minds of the best interpreters of Nature
to-day, and how the problems concerning life itself are
regarded.

Upon the next occasion of our meeting I will endeavor
to lay before you the evidence we possess bearing upon
the question of the relation of biology to geology. And
in doing so I shall select the vertebrata as the group
wherewith to point out that relationship, at the same
time fully assuring you that the facts we will have to
deal with hold true in principle for the invertebrata as
they likewise do for the entire vegetable kingdom. It
would be impossible in the short space of time represent-
ed by one of our lectures to deal with this subject by
attempting to demonstrate the bearing of the entire
animal and vegetable worlds, as they now exist upon the
face of the earth, to the science of geology, for the range
is far too wide; and, as I have first said, essentially the
same laws obtain throughout. Although I had not the
pleasure, last year, of attending the lecture given you by
Prof. Lester F. Ward, upon palaeobotany, I feel quite
sure he must at that time have had not a little to say
respecting the affinities existing among the various
modern florae and those fossil plants which have been

ON BIOLOGY. 25

discovered from time to time in the various geologic
horizons making up the crust of the earth. This is
especially fortunate inasmuch as that aspect of the sub-
ject has thas been brought before you by one of the
most able of all living polaeobotanists, as it does at the
same time relieve me of the necessity of passing into
similar fields for facts for my next lecture, e'en had I
the ability to present the matter with that lucidity and
breadth that I have no manner of doubt was done for you
by Prof. Ward.

Finally, to those who may be especially interested in
the present course of lectures and at the same time con-
sider themselves to be but tyros in the science of biology,
and desire by their reading to look into the subject of
each succeeding lecture, prior to my delivering it, I
would say that in considering the relation of biology to
geology we will also take into consderation the question
of the geographical distribution of many of the groups
of the world's existing vertebrata, as that is a matter of
prime importance to be dealt with, to the end that we
may attain to an understanding of the subject in chief.

II.

Its Relations to Geology.

As stated in my last lecture, to arrive at anything like
a fair comprehension of the relations of biology to geol-
ogy, we must first gain some general understanding of
the question of the geographical distribution of existing
forms of life. It was also pointed out that in order to
be enabled to enter upon this important subject with any
degree of thoroughness at all, it would become necessary
to limit ourselves to some one of the great branches of
the animal kingdom, and through it seek to illustrate the
main facts, as they are now known to biologists, which
pertain to the matter of the distribution of animals and
plants over the face of the globe. For this purpose the
vertebrata offer us as useful a group as any one thai
could be selected. The vertebrata, as you know, is that
most important branch of the animal kingdom which
includes all the back-boned animals, or the mammals,
birds, reptiles, batrachians, fishes and the like; and from
all these the distinguished British zoogeographer, Mr. A.
R. Wallace, chose the first class or the mammalia from
which to deduce the principles of the science of zoogeo-
graphy. Upon applying these principles to other great
groups of animals and to plants it has been found that in
the main they are in ha-mony with them, and where
decided exceptions exist they serve to explain questions
that would otherwise be in doubt.

Now zoogeography is a scheme by means of which we
can classify our knowledge of animal distribution and in
an orderly manner present it to the mind so that it can be
easily appreciated. Many scientists have devoted years
of study to this subject alone, and among them we must
not neglect to mention, in addition to Mr. Wal-
lace, already referred to, the names of Buffon, the
eminent French biologist, Agassiz, Allen, Gill, of this
country, Sclater of London, and Alexander Yon
Humboldt. In the present connection, however, it

28 LECTURES

will meet my purpose very well to adopt the
views in the premises as so ably set forth by Mr. Wallace.
As is the case with other departments of science, zoo-
geography has grown up from early and crude notions
of its principles to its now largely elaborated state.
With respect to the occurrence of animal and plant life
over the face of the earth, most of our American zoolo-
gists divide the land and water areas into divisions in
chief which they term "realms," while our British con-
freres give the name of "regions" to those areas. But
before giving the names of the zoogeographical regions
of Wallace, I wish to bring before you some of the gen-
eral facts in reference to animal distribution. In speak-
ing of the characteristic forms of animal life of any part
of the world's land or water areas, we refer to it as the
fauna of that part, as in making reference to its plants
we speak of them as ihe flora of the same or other parts.
We also use special names to designate what classes or
groups of classes of animals we may have independently
under consideration, as, for example, the birds of any
district are referred to as the avifauna of that district,
as, are the fishes of any special body of water as its pisci-
fauna. Elsewhere I have made use of the convenient
term anthropofauna in allusion to the race or races of
men that occur in any region, and similar words for
other groups will readily suggest themselves to you.

Now it is a well-known fact that certain classes of
animals are practically confined to the dry land, while
others are inhabitants of the fresh water, and still others
of the salt water; and, lastly, some are common both to
waters that are salt and to waters that are fresh. These
various kinds not only differ, but still another difference
is to be observed in any given locality when we either
gradually ascend or descend; that is to say, the flori and
fauna at the base of a mountain are usually very differ-
ent from the flora and fauna at different elevations
on the side of the mountain; and the same holds
true for the animals found at various depths
in the ocean or great fresh water lakes. Again, divers
latitudes, characterized by different climates, have also
their characteristic assemblages of plants and animals,
and even in different longitudes, where the climates may
be almost identically the same, the living populations are
again found to be dissimilar.

Not only do differences of latitude and longitude, dif-
ferences of climate, elevation and depths in the water
influence the kinds of animals and plants found in those

ON BIOLOGY. 29

various parts of the world, but the diversity in the physi-
cal geography of the earth's surface is another powerful
factor in determining faunal and floral limits. Plains
may encourage extended migrations, as do hills, moun-
tains, large rivers and seas check the same. The abun-
dance or absence and scarcity of certain foods over certain
areas also have an Influence. In many cases the faunal
limits can be but loosely defined, as any faunal district
may almost imperceptibly merge into any one of its ad-
joining ones, but certain surface contours may often, on
the other hand, sharply define some of the boundaries,
and animals of the contiguous areas not pass over the
line. Some species range through several faunal areas,
others are never found beyond, perhaps, some quite lim-
ited locality, these several restrictions and diffusions
nearly always being due to assignable natural causes.
Where certain species arrive at their maximum of
abundance it is generally supposed to indicate the area of
the origination of that species.

Soils also play their part, and it will be clear that the
fauna of extensive marshy districts are sure to be quite
unlike the fauna of a great desert; indeed, in the case of
the latter, it has led an eminent authority to say that
"deserts may act much as inland seas to separate the ani-
mals of the adjoining more fertile tracts, and they afford
dwelling-places for animals which are incapable of living
elsewhere. Desert faunae have a general fades the world
over, though the original elements out of which the
faunae have been made up may radically differ."

Although a great ocean, such as the Pacific or the
Atlantic, forms almost a positive barrier to the spread of
the land animals of its opposite coasis, which are in-
variably quite distinct, yet at the same time, within its
own self, the great ocean currents form means of dispersal
of prime importance for many land animals and the vast
majority of marine forms. Again, as we have already
pointed out, climate in most cases is a positive barrier to
the spread of animals in many directions, whereas the
alternation of the seasons, and even the severity or mild-
ness of the Summers and Winters powerfully urge many
animals to migrate, and thus for the time being, at least,
to pass beyond either their local or general faunal areas.
Migrations from such causes, in the main, however, take
place within the boundary of any faunal region where
they occur. A familiar example of this is our own
United States vernal and autumnal migration of birds

30 LECTURES

which takes place every year, and that for the entire
width and breadth of the continent.

As another means of the dispersal of animals we have
those various movements which take place in the atmos-
phere itself, and it has been noted that the trade winds,
hurricanes and cyclones, or even the minor whirlwinds
do much sometimes toward scattering the lighter forms
of animal life as well as the seeds of many plants, and by
such means new organisms are often transported to
distant faunal areas to which they were formerly un-
known. In any special case, should the environment
prove compatible to a species thus violently introduced,
that species may become established and thrive in the
new region, or it may, the reverse holding true, become
gradually extinct, or even may perish at once.

Q.uite a number of artificial means, introduced by man,
himself, have from time to time acted as factors in either
favoring the dispersal of certain animals or tending to
restrict them to certain localities. Bridging large
streams, the transportation of many of the smaller forms
in steamers, grain cars, trains, and other modes of con-
veyance; the joining of large bodies of water by means of
the opening of artificial canals; and finally, even the con-
struction of country roads have all had their influence
along the lines indicated.

Anticipating for the moment the discussion of the main
subject of our lecture, we mav say here that the dispersal
and rearrangement of faunae and floras in past ages of the
world, have been powerfully affected by geologic changes;
as, for example, the effects produced by the glacial
period as a whole, as well as those profounder changes —
the upheavals, depressions and submergences of conti-
nental margins and areas. It must be borne well in mind
that at the present time the faunae and florae of the various
zoogeographic legions are continuously but gradually
undergoing many changes, brought about by the ex-
termination of some forms, by the slow development of
new species, and by the gradual physical changes of the
earth characteristic of the present epoch.

To sum them up, we may say, in tne words of. Huxley:
"It has been discovered by careful comparison of local
faunae and florae that certain areas of the earth's surface
are inhabited by groups of animals and plants which are
not found elsewhere, and which thus characterize each
of these areas.1'

We are now in position to return to the naming of those
areas, and as we have already said, the views of Mr. Wai-

ON BIOLOGY. 31

lace will receive our attention in the premises. It was in
1876 when Wallace published the work containing his
scheme, and he then recognized six primary zoogeo-
graphical regions of the globe, and subdivided them as
follows:

I. Palaearctic region, with four sub-regions: (1) North
Europe. (2) Mediterranean, or South Europe. (3)
Siberia. (4) Manchuria, or Japan.

II. Ethiopian region, with four sub-regions: (1
East Africa. (2) West Africa. (3) South Africa. (4
Madagascar.

III. Oriental region, with four sub-regions: (1) Hin-
dostan, or Central India. (2) Ceylon. (3) Indo-China,
or Himalayas. (4) Indo-Malaya.

IV. Australian region, with four sub-regions: (1)
Austro-Malaya. (2) Australia. (3) Polynesia. (4)
New Zealand.

V. Neotropical region, with four sub-regions: (1)
Chili, or South Temperate America. (2) Brazil. (3)
Mexico, or Tropical North America. (4) Antilles.

VI. Nearctic region, with four sub-regions: (1) Cali-
fornia. (2) Rocky Mountains. (3) Alleganies, or East
United States. (4) Canada.

As has already been intimated, these regions are prac-
tically independent of the question of the marine distri-
bution of animals. But the principles which apply to
zoo-oceanic areas and regions are, in the main, almost
identical with those laws which govern the occurrence of
the life-forms in the terrestrial zoogeographical divisions.
So that, for our present purpose, they need not be espe-
cially discussed here.

With respect to the terrestrial divisions just given, and
using Mr. Wallace's own words, we are to note that the
"I. Palaearctic Region, which includes all Europe to the
Azores and Iceland, all temperate Asia from the high
Himalayas and west of the Indus, with Japan, and China
from Ningpo and to the north of the watershed of the
Yang-tse-Kiang; also North Africa and Arabia, to about
the line of the tropic of Cancer. This, may be popularly
called the European region, Europe being the richest and
most varied portion of it and containing representatives
of all the more important types; but it must not be for-
gotten that the region includes a much larger area in
Asia, and that there are many peculiar North Asiatic
animals.

"II. The Ethiopian Region, which includes all Africa
south of the tropic of Cancer, as well as the southern

32 LECTURES

part of Arabia, with Madagascar and the adjacent
islands. It may be popularly termed the African region.

"III. The Oriental region, which is comparatively
small, including India and Ceylon, the Indo-Chinese
countries and southern China, and the Malay Archipel-
ago as far as the Phillipines, Borneo and Java. It may
be popularly called the South Asiatic or Indian region.

"IV. The Australian Region, which is composed of
the remainder of the Malay Archipelago, Australia, New
Zealand, and all the tropical islands of the Pacific, as far
east as the Marquesas and the Low Archipelago.

"V. The Neotropical Region, which" comprises the
whole of South America and the adjacent islands, the
West Indies or Antilles, and the tropical parts of Central
America and Mexico. It may be well called the South
American Region.

"VI. The Nearctic Region, which consists of all tem-
perate and arctic North America, with Greenland, and is
thus well described as the North American Region."

As it has just been defined, it will be seen that exten-
sive areas of the Palaearctic Region are under a high
state of cultivation and much of it is thickly populated.
In consequence ot these two facts extermination, in times
past, has been the fate of many of its mammalia, and this
process is at present going on more rapidly than ever. It
has thinned the ranks of animal life within the bounda-
ries of the region to such an extent that, notwithstanding
its extensiveness, it ranks at present below the smaller
old and new world regions of the tropics in the richness of
its mammalian fauna. Some of its forms, however, are
quite peculiar, while others are highly characteristic.
There are camels and a half-dozen different genera of
deer. A genus of dogs of the family Canidce occur, and a
great variety of the rodentia abound, as rats, mice, squir-
rels, hares, and their kind. Seven genera of rumi-
nants fall within the limits of this region; all of the fam-
ily Bomdce; and weasels and pandas are also characteristic.
Upon its northern coasts are found seals, and the land
carnivora are well represented in the wildcats, the
wolves, foxes and bears. In other parts wild horses and
asses exist, the latter being abundant in Asia.

Passing to the Ethiopian Region, which includes in
the main Africa and the great island of Madagascar, we
are struck at once with the marked differences in its
mammalian fauna as compared with what we found in
the Palaearctic Region. Madagascar and the Mascarene
Islands are especially remarkable, and in the case of the

ON BIOLOGY. 33

first mentioned we find many characteristic small mam-
mals not found on the African Continent, while it lacks
all the large carnivora, the apes, giraffes, elephants, ante-
lopes and others which are found there. Wallace has said:

"The African Continent is preeminently the country of
large mammalia. It possesses an abundance of elephants,
rhinoceroses of several species, giraffes (now peculiar to
it), gorillas and baboons — the largest of the ape tribe — a
host of large and remarkable antelopes, the huge hip-
popotamus, several species of zebras, wild buffaloes, sev-
eral remarkable forms of swine, and an abundance of
lions, leopards, and hyenas— forming together an assem-
blage of large and highly organized animals such as occur
nowhere else upon the globe. There are also many
smaller, but very remarkable forms."

And so it goes with the four remaining regions defined
above, the Oriental, the Australian, the Neotropical, and
the Nearctic. Each possesses its peculiar and character-
istic forms of mammals, and each region its varying
physical aspect. What has been said of the first two
holds true in principle in all the others.

Australia of the Australian Region is especially charac-
terized, inasmuch as all the more ordinary forms of mam-
mals are not found there, their room being taken by the
varied group of the marsupials, of which there are 5
distinct families and many genera. Echidna and Orni-
thorhynchus, two other distinct families of most remark-
able mammals, are also found on the Australian Conti-
nent.

Thus we see how it is that animal and plant life is dis-
tributed over the face of the globe according to certain
natural laws, and that those distributions have varied
during the past history of the earth, owing to the varied
application of the same laws and to other circumstances.
In short there is in the individual case of any existing
animal or plant on the earth a reason for its being found
over one area and not over another. There is a very good
reason why giraffes are found in Africa and not in Mex-
ico, as there is why we find yucca in the heart of Mexico,
and not in Africa.

Science has made very considerable progress toward
the elucidation and demonstration of many of the laws to
which I refer; there still remains, however, in the grasp
of the great unknown a vast store of tacts not yet brought
to light, though the incessant investigation of the scien-
tific researcher tends to almost daily pass them over to
the realm of the known.

34 LECTURES

With this brief but, I believe, sufficient account of ani-
mal distribution for our present purpose, we are now in
position to pass a step still nearer the main subject of our
lecture. For, without some strong hint as to the laws
governing the distribution of existing life, we could
hardly have been expected to draw a clear picture of
what geology has to show us for the ages that are past.

As commonly defined in books, geology is the science
which treats of the physical history of the earth's crust,
and of the operation of those laws which are responsible
for the changes which have occurred in it throughout
time. But there is a great deal more in the science than
this definition would at first appear to indicate, and in
the writer's estimation no one among us has more beauti-
fully dwelt upon its real teachings than our distinguished
countryman, Professor Joseph Le Conte.

Le Conte has pointed out that the study of the science
of geology falls naturally under three great divisional
heads or departments. Under structural geology we may
regard the earth much in the same light as the anatomist
regards the body, and study it from the standpoint of its
external form and internal structure. Or, again, under
dynamical geology we may have to do with what may be
considered the physiology of the earth, or the action upon
its structure by the elements, as the air, water and cer-
tain chemical and physical forces. Lastly, we have
historical geology, comparable with the science of
embryology for it takes into consideration the history of
the development of the earth and the laws which have
governed that development.

Our authority, then, proceeds to show "that there are
certain laws underlying all development — certain general
principles common to all history, whether of the in-
dividual, the race, or the earth." The geologist finds
that these general principles are quite as applicable to his
science, or to the earth's history, as they are, for
example, to the civic history of man, or the history of
civilization.

"All history is divided into eras, ages, periods, epochs,
separated from each' other more or less trenchantly by
great events producing great changes. In written history
these are treated according to their importance, in
separate volumes, or separate chapters, sections, etc. So
earth history is similarly divided into geological eras,
ages, periods, etc.; and these have been recorded by
Nature in separate rock-systems, rock-series, rock-
formations, and rock-strata."

ON BIOLOGY. 35

When such comparisons receive our further reflections
it becomes apparent that eras, ages, periods, etc., in all
history insensibly graduate into each other, "though
sometimes the change is more rapid and revolutionary."
We may even make it comparable with individual
history, where those ages we call infancy, childhood,
youth, and manhood imperceptibly merge into each
other. And here, not infrequently, some deeply felt ex-
perience may hasten on the characteristics of the suc-
ceeding stages. Certain vicissitudes make some in-
dividuals men of affairs before they are twenty, yet they
may retain some of those characters which pertain to
youth.

"In social and political life, too, successive phases of
civilization, embodying successive dominant principles,
usually graduate into each other; yet great events have
sometimes determined exceptionally rapid changes in the
direction or the rate of movement. So also is it in geo-
logical history. The eras, periods, etc., usually shade
more or less insensibly into each other; yet there have
been times of comparatively rapid or revolutionary
change. In all history there are periods of comparative
quiet, during which forces of change are gathering
streneth, separated by periods of more rapid change,
during which the accumulated forces produce conspicu-
ous effects."

Geologic history teaches us that early in the earth's
growth there was a time when those organisms we call
mollusks weie the dominant types throughout nature. It
was an age of mollusks. They appeared gradually and
gradually culminated, then declined, then imperceptibly
became less and less numerous, to exist in diminishing
numbers up to the present time. As they began to de-
cline a higher group, or the fishes appeared, which passed
through a similar rise, culmination and declination, and
again carried up in a similar manner to the present age.
Corresponding ages of reptiles and mammals, successively
follow overlapping and merging with each other in pre-
cisely the same manner and each in turn successively
dominating, ihus giving us an age of mollusks, an age of
fishes, and age of reptiles and so on. Here, as in individ-
ual, or in social history, or the history of civilization, we
find each overlapping age foreshadowing the previous
one and the dominating characteristics of each arising
in the successive ages of their predecessors. When
these phases are made comparable with individual his-
tory, Le Conte reminds us; "In youth, the characteristic

36 LECTURES

faculties of childhood, viz., perception and memory,
decline and become subordinate to the higher faculty
of imagination, and this, in turn, becomes subordinate
to the still higher faculty of productive thought; and
thus the whole organism becomes higher and more com-
plex. Each stage of development including not only its
own characteristic, but also, in a subordinate degree,
those of all preceding stages."

D Precisely the same principles apply to social develop-
ment, where the forces characteristic of the previous
stages of its history are successively absorbed and included
by each succeeding stage. And, as development proceeds,
the entire social structure ever becomes more complex,
richer in detail, and occupies higher and higher planes.
All this is repeated in geologic history.

Now in geology there are two methods employed for
determining the extent of its eras, ages, periods and other
divisions. We may, in the first instance, rely upon the
unconformitv of the rock-system, and in the second in
the change of the life-system. Almost without exception
the life-system is found to correspond with the uncon-
formity of the rock-system, and in the few cases where it
does not it should be followed as the safer guide.

All over the world the great geologic eras, ages and
periods are the same, though the minor divisions of the
latter are non-cotemporaneous they are, nevertheless,
likewise similar.

First, then, we have the grand divisions of the earth's
geologic history as a whole. These are designated as the
eras and there are five of them. The oldest of all is the
Arcnaean or Eozoic, which includes the Laurentian sys-
tem; above this occurs the Palaeozoic era, embodying the
Palaeozoic or Primary system; superimposed upon tnis is
the Mesozoic era, the record of which is embodied in the
Secondary system this is followed by the Cenozoic era,
whose history has been written in the Tertiary and Quar-
ternary systems; fifthly and lastly occurs the Psychozoic
era, which may well be designated as the era of mind,
it being the recent system or the system of the present
time.

So again, as has already been intimated, the history of
the earth as a whole is susceptible of being divided into
seven ages, based upon the culminations during geologic
time of certain great groups of animals. These are, first,
the Archaean age which is measured by the rocks of the
Laurentian system; second, the age of mollusks, or the
age of invertebrates, including the Silurian formation of

ON BIOLOGY. 37

rocks; the Devonian age, represented by the series of
rocks in which the ichthyian or fish forms culminated;
the age of Amphibians, represented by the rocks of the
carboniferous strata; the age of Reptiles, represented by
the rocks of the Secondary system; the Mammalian age,
represented by the Tertiary and Quarternary; and lastly,
the age of Man, represented by the recent rocks.

Unconformity in the rock system, though of a less
general nature, also furnishes the necessary basis for the
subdivisions of eras and ages into the minor subdivisions
of periods and epochs. So much, then, for the methods
adopted by geologists for demonstrating the natural
divisions of the earth's crust and the names they have
applied to those divisions. The subject includes a very
small part of the science of geology — one chapter out of
a great many, many others— but it will suffice our pur-
pose here. It will hardly be necessary to add that the
Laurentian rock system of the Archaean era is the oldest
known to geologists, the others in the order we have pre-
sented them being successively more and more recent
until we arrive at the Psychozoic or the present horizon.
' It is not to be believed, however, that the very lowest
stratum of the Laurentian rocks represents the original
or primitive crust of the earth, for there is evidence in
them of stratification which abundantly indicates that
they have been formed from other rooks which underlie
them, and these likely from still others and vastly older
ones of which we as yet have no definite knowledge.
When one appreciates the manner in which these rocks
were built up, and realizes the fact that in some parts of
the world they exhibit a thickness of 40,000 feet, it is not
difficult to conceive of the enormous lapse of time they
represent. As a matter of fact the Archaean era extends
over a greater length of time than all of the remaining
history of the earth put together. We have all heard, at
differ nt times, of the enormous periods of time that
geologists insist upon when speaking of the processes
that have led to the formation of the crust of the earth
as it is now presented to us. It will be quite in point in
this place to dwell for a moment upon this matter, as it
is of importance in connection with what I have to say
further along. There are those who believe, though it is
a satisfaction to know that their number is steadily de-
creasing, that geologists are prone to indulge in a species
of guessing when they come to estimate the lapses of
time that have taken place during the various eras, ages,
periods, etc., of the world's history, as recorded in the

38 LECTURES

several geological horizons. Some have gone so far as to
say that they have been guided simply by the great
apparent age of the fossil remains of animals that for-
merly Inhabited the earth; that the mere fact of
such remains being converted into petrifactions must of
necessity have taken millions of years; that those esti-
mates are, in their estimation, still further supported by
the discovery in different parts of the world of entire
forests of enormous trees which at some other very re-
mote age were similarly fossilized. But those people to
whom I refer are quite wrong in the premises, and the
conception of the lapses of time in the world's history, as
arrived at by the geologist, is by no means based upon
any such data. Nor do we claim upon the other hand
that the time calculations as arrived at by the geologist
are to be considered correct beyond all peradventure of a
doubt; they may be hundreds of years or even thousands
of years wide of the truth; but, notwithstanding all that,
they never vitiate his right to state within certain bounds
the immense lapses of time that it has taken Nature to
bring about some of her results as they are revealed to us
in our study of the physical history of the world and
recorded in her geology.

In order to illustrate my meaning permit me to present
you with one or two examples. A very simple one is the
calculation of the time it has probably taken for the
Niagara River to excavate its gorge. That feat is but one
of many thousands of Nature's chiselings, which has
been accomplished entirely within the scope of the pres-
ent epoch, and the computation of tbe time it has taken to
perform it is a matter of no great difficulty, as the physi-
cal factors of the problem are at our hand. The geolo-
gist tells us that he believes it to have been about 36,000
years. Now there is no difficulty in ascertaining the fact
that Lake Erie has an elevation of about 300 feet above
Lake Ontario, the former being terminated by an abrupt
escarpment of about 300 feet in height; and, from this
point, according to an eminent authority, "a narrow
gorge, with nearly perpendicular sides and 200 to 300 feet
deep, runs backward through the higher or Erie plateau
as far as the falls. The Niagara River runs out of Lake
Erie and upon the Erie plateau as far as the falls, then
pitches 167 feet perpendicularly, and then runs in the
gorge for seven miles to Q.ueenstown where it emerges on
the Ontario plateau. Long observation has proved that
the position of the fall is not stationary, but slowly
recedes at a rate which has been variously estimated

OF THF

X

SITY 1

UNIVERSITY

i ir

ON BIOLOGY. 39

from one to three feet per annum. The process of reces-
sion has been carefully observed, and the reason why it
maintains its perpendicularity is very clear. The sur-
face rock of Erie plateau is a firm limestone. Beneath
this is a softer shale. This softer rock is rapidly eroded
by the force of the falling water, and leaves the harder
limestone, projecting as tablerocks. From time to time
these projecting tables are loosened and fall into the
chasm below." Taking into consideration the configura-
tion of the country; the nature of the strata and their
contents of the walls of the gorge; the carefully observed
progress of erosion, which has been noted for many
years by competent persons; it soon becomes evident to
any intelligent observer that, in the first place, the falls
of Niagara were originally situated at Queenstown, and
that during the present geologic epoch they have cut
their way back seven miles to their present position, and
that this erosion is advancing at a rate of about one foot
per annum.

With the length and height of the gorge, and with the
rate of the recession of the falls each year, by the sim-
plest arithmetic we can easily get at the result we have
already mentioned. In the history of the formation of
the world, however, 36,000 years is an exceedingly small
matter, really but a moment as compared with a cen-
tury when we consider it in connection with the ab-
solutely inconceivable lapses of time recorded
in the older geologic eras. How insignificant, for
instance, as compared with those typical and vast
erosions as seen in the Grand Canon of
the Colorado and other canons of the same
enormous system. The plateau in which' that great
erosion occurs is elevated some seven or eight thousand
feet above the sea; and, in case of the Grand Canon of the
Colorado, the eroding stream it contains has cut its way
down through the earth for a distance of from three to
nearly seven thousand feet in some places. It has a
length of 300 miles. Its lateral walls clearly exhibit
nearly the entire geological series from the tertiary age
downward, and it shows the strata of the eroded plateau
to be very nearly horizontally deposed. There is not a
shadow of a doubt as to how that great abyss was sculpt,
for the same agencies are still in operation at the present
moment and the enormous eroding power can be seen as
the work goes on. If the comparatively short and shal-
low gorge of the Niagara River took 36,000 years to be
carved back to its present site, I beg to leave it to your

40 LECTURES

imagination how long it took the Colorado River to find
its present bed, a mile below the surface of the earth, and
for a distance of 300 miles in length.

Deltas of rivers and their formations furnish us with
more of Nature's operations from which we may make
toleratly correct estimates of the time it takes for such
feats to be performed. The delta of the Mississippi
could not have taken less than 50,000 years and probably
took a very much greater time to form. Here we have
for data the cubical contents of the delta; the annual
mud-discharge of the river; and the computation of the
extent of the submarine portion of the delta, and some
few minor factors.

Again, the history of the coal beds and the accumula-
tion of coal oifer us with another series of facts from
which it is possible to gain some idea from another point
of view of the enormous lapse of time it has taken Nature
to achieve some of her works.

It is now perfectly demonstrable that coal was accumu-
lated during the Carboniferous period, and the accumula-
tion and formation of it took place at the mouths of
certain great rivers, which at that time discharged
themselves into the ocean. There, in such places, existed
vast peat swamps, overgrown by the peculiar vegetation
of that period, which at all times were subject to floods
from the river on the one hand, and inundations from
high oceanic tides on the other. A recent coal bed, of
identically the same nature, is now in the process of
formation under our very eyes in the Mississippi delta,
and careful study is alone required to decide the rate at
which coal is deposited therein. Oiher forces are and
were also at work both during recent time and during the
geologic period or subperiodsof the Carboniferous system.
These have been scientifically considered by many com-
petent geologists, and their operations taken duly into
consideration, but it is not necessary for us to dwell upon
them here, and to many of you they are no doubt already
familiar. It has been ascertained, for example, that a
vigorous vegetation yields by death and decay and
growth about 100 tons of dried organic matter per cen-
tury to the acre. But such an amount of vegetable mat-
tjr pressed to the specific gravity of coal would make a
layer only a little over half an inch in thickness, when
spread over the area just mentioned. It must not be for-
gotten, however, that certain chemical losses are experi-
enced during such a process, and upon giving these due
weight the result has been arrived at that, instead of de-

ON BIOLOGY. 41

positing over half an inch, our estimate should read only
about one-eighth of an inch, at which rate it would require
about ten thousand years to make a layer one foot thick.
In any coal basin with an aggregate thickness of 100 feet
its formation must have required one million
years to accomplish. But it is not uncommon
to find 150 feet to be the average thickness in
some coal measures, and a proportionately
longer time must have been required. This method of
computation takes into consideration the rate at which a
vigorous vegetation produces organic matter, but we may
also arrive at a solution by estimating the rate at which
the river deposits its sediments over the area in which
the coal is forming.

I will conclude this part of my subject with an ex-
ample of this nature, presented us by the authority
quoted in several instances above, and we are told that
our indebtedness is to Sir Charles Lyell for the "estimate
of the time necessary to accumulate the Nova Scotia coal
measures. This coal-field is selected because the evi-
dences of river sediments are very clear throughout.
The area of this coal-basin is 18,000 square miles; but the
identity in character of portions now widely separated
by seas — e. g., on Prince Edward's Island, Cape Breton,
Magdalen Island, etc. — plainly shows that ail these are
parts of one original field, which could not have been less
than 30,000 square miles.

"At Pictou, the thickness is nearly 13,000 feet, and we
certainly shall not err on the side of excess, therefore, if
we take the average thickness over the whole area of
7,500 feet. This would give the cubic contents of the
original delta deposit as about 51,000 cubic miles. Now,
the Mississippi River, according to Humphrey and Ab-
bott, carries to iis delta annually sediment enough ta
cover a square mile 268 feet deep, or nearly exactly one-
twentieth of a cubic mile. Therefore, to accumulate the
mass of sediment mentioned above would take the Mis-
sissippi about 1,000,000 years."

And, mark you, in the geological series of the earth's
crust the Carboniferous period is not more than one-
thirtieth of her recorded history. Then we must believe
that that history covers a period of 30,000,000 of years.
But Mr. Wallace, by a most careful estimate made from
the premises of the general erosion of the land area of
the earth, makes its recorded history but 28,000,000 of
years. Here is a difference of 2,000,000 of years, as well
as a difference of opinion, but it can, nevertheless, hardly

42 LECTURES

be considered worthy of dispute. To me, the most re-
markable part of the whole question is that so many fair
and candid men, using such a variety of physical data,
should, in reality, arrive at such a comparatively uni-
form result after all.

Yet 30,000,000 of years "gives us no adequate con-
ception of the time involved in the geological history of
the earth. For rocks disintegrated into soils and de-
posited as sediments are again reconsolidated into rocks,
lifted into land-surfaces to be again disintegrated into
soils, transported and deposited as sediments. And thus
the same materials have been worked over and over
again, perhaps many times. Thus the history of the
earth, recorded in stratified rocks, stretches out in ap-
parently endless vista. And still beyond this, beyond the
recorded history, is the infinite unknown abyss of the un-
recorded. The domain of geology is nothing less than (to
us) inconceivable or infinite time." (Le Conte.)

With the brief sketch I have given of the distribution
of existing animals, and the still briefer account of the
divisions of geologic history and the enormous lapses of
time that measure those immense ages, we may now pro-
ceed to show that it is through the science of palaeon-
tology that biology is linked to the very important science
of geology.

Broadly speaking, palaeontology treats of the fossil re-
mains of animals and plants as they occur in the earth's
crust. It takes into consideration their structure, their
taxonomy, their affinities both with extinct types and
forms yet existing. Moreover palaeontology is the hand-
maiden of geology, inasmuch as it is through its aid, or
the employment of the life-system, we are enabled to de-
termine and limit the several eras, ages, periods, etc., in
geology. In this sense it acts as a check upon the alter-
native method of establishing the divisions in geology, of
which we speak, or of the employment of the rock-system
to which reference has already been made.

As I have said in a previous lecture one of the great
departments of palaeontology is palaaobotany, the science
that deals with the fossil florae of the world; and in an-
other, though less strict sense, the science of archaeology
in reality falls within the domain of palaeontology, as in
the main it treats of the works of extinct races of men.
My reasons have already been advanced for including
palaeontology, palaeobotany. and archaeology, all within the
limits of the science of biology where in reality they each
and all belong.

ON BIOLOGY. 43

It is most natural that that department of palaeontology
which takes Into consideration the geological history of
man is the one that has always been of the greatest
interest to the world at large. For some time past our
knowledge of the history of man in its entirety has been
sufficiently extensive so as to admit of its being system-
atically arranged under various heads and divisions.
Students in archaeology see three main divisions or ages,
as they are called, in the history of human progress and
civilization. These are first the Stone age including that
lapse of time when men employed stone principally to
form their tools and weapons. Early in his history such
material was simply chipped out to serve his purpose,
and that time is referred to as the Palaeolithic period;
but during the latter part of the stone age men came to
polish those chipped stone implements, and that time has
been designated as the Neolithic period. The Paleolithic
period has again been subdivided into a Reindeer age
corresponding with the second Glacial epoch, and a Mam-
moth age, corresponding with the Champlain epoch.
With the Neolithic commences the present Psychozoic
era, and the reign of man is completely established
These ages, however, are not universally represented, nor
do they everywhere, by any means, closely correspond
with the geological horizons I have mentioned. This
will be clear when we come to tnink that it is only three
hundred years ago that our Indians were in the Stone age
and the South Sea Islanders have, as yet, progressed no
farther than the Neolithic period to-day. It is in Europe
that the correspondences are the closest, for it is due to
the archaeologists of that country to have first clearlv
established them.

Our two remaining ages in the history of human civili-
zation are the age of Bronze and the Iron age, but their
consideration falls completely within the pale of modern
history, and so does not especially concern us here

Every year that goes by rewards the researches of the
archaeologist in various parts of the world with the dis-
covery of relics which tend to throw more or less light
upon the history of primeval man upon earth For the
most part these consist either of examples of his ancient
works or of the remains of man himself. And we mav
add here, that notwithstanding the fact that the evidence
on the side of the question of man having arisen in time
from the most lowly ancestors, by evolutional develop-
ment, it is, nevertheless, true that up to the present time
all the remains we have of him go to show that nothing

44 LECTURES

as yet has been discovered but what shows him to have
been most distinctively human. Those remains of the
earliest men yet met with attest to the fact, to be sure,
that he stood very low in the scale of civilization, and had
by no means attained to the position of the "lord of crea-
tion." What I mean to say is that we have not as yet
met with the skeletal remains of fossil or sub-fossil man,
that directly link him with his anthropoid affines. Such
material, I am constrained to believe, lies locked up for
the archaeologist of the future in the Quarternary of Asia,
where most probablv urimittve man originallv arose.

There is no doubt whatever that man existed through-
out the entire Quarternary period. In this country his
remains have been found upon both coasts; his first ap-
pearance was, however, probably upon the Pacific Coast
and, as many believe, as a migrant from Asia. His bones
and rude works of art have also been discovered in
Europe, India and South America. Such relics often oc-
cur in caves, in the drift and elsewhere, where they are
mixed up with the bones of animals long since extinct,
as mastodons, cave-bears and the like, leaving no doubt
whatever as to the cotemporaneity of the two. In
Southern France occur the Perigord Caves, in which
have been discovered some of the most interesting speci-
mens of extinct men; pieces of reindeer antler have been
discovered, upon which, plainly etched, we find figures of
the mammoth long, long since exterminated in Europe.
Several skulls of early or middle Quarternary men have
been found in different parts of Europe, and that, too, in
situations precluding all doubt as to their age. These
skulls present every evidence that they belonged to a
very, very low species of man. There are plenty of men
living, however, and they are to be found among the sav-
age races, in whose skulls we see characters quite as low
as those distinguishing the crania of the men of the early
Quarternary period. Nevertheless, it must be remem-
bered that all the skulls of ancient men thus far discov-
ered are of the very lowest of the savage type. It is fair
to presume that they in their way indicate what kind of
men existed in those far distant times, and that we will
never meet with any higher types coming from the same
geological horizon. If we do ever meet with any at all
different, everything points to the probability that they
will prove to be of a very much lower order, most likely
anthropoid in their general contour. So much for the
Quarternary, now what do we find as we pass to the Ter-
tiary age; nothing more than one would naturally

ON BIOLOGY. 45

expect, that is, a greater meagerness of
the record. No remains of bones of an-
cient men, and only a handful, comparatively
speaking, of somewhat doubtful specimens of his works.
These are principally roughly chipped flints, and bones of
animals showing some suspicious scratches; and, in truth,
such is the evidence in brief. Writing in ISiS, Le Cbnte
remarks: "The Miocene man is not acknowledged by a
single careful geologist." "Mr.

Favre, reviewing the whole subject up to 1870, and,
again, Evans, President of the Geological Society of Lon-
don, reviewing the subject up to 187-5, and Dawkins in
1879, and Lubbock in 1881, decide that the existence of
Tertiary man is yet unproved."

For myself I can only say, and influenced as I am by
the study of a large collection of fossils from the Pliocene
of Oregon, only recently completed, that my inclinations
lead me to believe that man did exist during the latter
part of the Tertiary, at leas'"-, and was probably in exist-
ence as a very low type of the genus Homo at a much
earlier date. As to how long man has existed upon earth
as man, geologists are at variance in their opinions, the
time ranging all the way from 7,000 to 100,000 years.
Evidence is not lacking, I think, to show .that the latter
is probably more nearly true than the former. Res- arches
in this most engaging field of all others open to man, are
being continually pushed with the greatest degree of
interest, and there can be no question that in the future
many important discoveries will be made, tending to
throw 'additional light upon the subject.

It is nought to be surprised at, that the geological his-
tory of man is so thoroughly imperfect, and were it not
for his works that have been preserved in diiferent parts
of the earth, how vastly more imperfect that record
would be! Remove all that the archaeologist has brought
to light; bring down the pala3ontological history of man
to his bones alone, and *it would be represented
but by a few mutilated pages in a history of
many, manv volumes. He would then be com-
parable with other forms of vertebrates of the
great group of mammals to which he belongs,
and how meager, very meager, is the geological record
with some of them. Thousands upon thousands of mam-
mals, with histories extending through enormous lapses
of time, have existed, developed and become extinct upon
the earth, and absolutely left no palieontological history
at all. Many of those animals were undoubtedly of mas-

46 LECTURES

todonic proportions; legions of them were of moderate
and diminutive sizes; and their forms must have been
almost of endless variety. Think for a moment, as an
illustration of my meaning, of the innumerable herds of
buffaloes that once covered our Western prairies; and
what, do you suppose, would be the chance of discover-
ing a fossil specimen of that animal a few thousand
years hence? Barely any whatever. Wallace tells us:

"Fossil remains of land animals are, of course, rarely
found except in lacustrine or estuarine deposits; and
these are often entirely wanting throughout extensive
geological formations. But even where such fossiliferous
beds occur, the conditions favorable to the preservation
of small mammalia are exceedingly rare, the entire series
of freshwater Wealden beds having yielded no trace of
them, although we are quite certain that they were then
both varied and abundant. Even more remarkable is
the fact that the whole twenty-five species of Purbeck
mammals, belonging to ten genera, were obtained from a
single stratum only a few inches thick, and from an area
of less than 500 square yards. Yet these small animals
must have abounded at this period; and it is impossible
to believe that anything but a most imperfect and frac-
tional representation of the mammalian fauna of the
country could have been gathered into this narrow grave-
yard. But this thin stratum occurs amid a mass of
freshwater deposits 160 feet thick, the whole of which
have been thoroughly and systematically examined by
the officers of the Geological Survey of Great Britain;
and though many of the layers contain remains of land
organisms — plants, insects, and land-shells — no other part
of the whole series has yielded a single fragment of
mammalian remains! Having the striking example of
the worthlessness of negative evidence, it behooves us to
be cautious of rejecting any legitimate conclusions from
the facts in our possession, on account of the absence of
the direct evidence of fossil remains."

From this let us turn to the other aspect of the ques-
tion and examine what in reality palaeontologists have
discovered and the bearings of that material upon biol-
ogy. Confessedly as meager as the number of fossils of
animals is that have come to light, it is so only when
taken in comparison with the vast host of extinct forms
which have as yet not rewarded the researches of science,
and still are hidden in the crust of the earth, or have
perished utterly. For, take mammals as an example, the
list of fossil forms now known is by no means to be de-

ON BIOLOGY. 47

spised, and the light their careful study has thrown upon
many problems touching the origin of their kind
is simply incalculable. Many hundreds of them
are in our possession, and the number is con-
stantly being added to each year. Bearing in
mind what has already been said relative to
the geographical distribution of existing mammals, what
would we naturally look for among the fossil forms of the
present geological era in any given locality? Naturally,
the fossil and sub-fossil specimens of the existing mam-
mals of that locality; and do we find them? It is exactly
what we do find, and the fossilized bones as they are dis-
covered are ascertained to have belonged to individuals
of identically the same species of those now living, or in
the case of the extinct types to very closely related
species, genera, families and so on. In other words, all
over the world the fossil florae and faunae of the Recent
epoch of the Psychozoic era are of species still living over
the regions where such material is discovered.

To some extent this is also characteristic of
the next preceding geologic system or of the
Quarternary; but, and still adhering to the mammalia
as our example, we meet with some very remarkable
differences. Now it is a well-known fact that during
the Quarternary period, in all the high- latitude regions,
the earth's crust experienced many profound oscillations
which were accompanied by great climatic changes.
Mammals, as a class, culminated during those times, and
the pristine types of men appeared early on the scene.
The geologic history of the world passed through the
Glacial, Champlain and Terrace epochs During the first
the earth's crust, everywhere in high latitudes, was
elevated to a height of 2,000 feet or more above its present
level. This area was sheeted over with a great mantle of
ice, which sloped away far down into the temperate
zone. An arctic climate prevailed. The reverse move-
ment took place during the Champlain epoch and the
entire region was again depressed, and that to such an
extent that the seas stood upward of a 1,000 feet above
their present levels. Lastly, the Terrace epoch was
characterized by the whole region to which we refer
gradually coming to assume its present physical aspects.
So there was, during this time, a gradual rising of the
land of the high latitudes, accompanied by a gradual ap-
proach to our present climate. Many of the events and
profound physical changes enacted during those three
epochs have been carefully worked out, and in detail,

48 LECTURES

but the great length of their account renders it impossi-
ble for me to enter upon such an extensive subject here.

In this country we find the fossil or preserved remains
of mammals that flourished during the Quarternary
period in, first, marshes and bogs, where the heavier herbi-
vores were frequently mired; secondly, in the bone caves
where the carnivorous types most often occur, together
with the other large species as ungulates, rodents and
edentates. Lastly, many various species have been discov-
ered in the river gravels, especially in those of California.
Most of the Quarternary mammals are now extinct; they
were notably peculiar and often of great size. Some were
the direct ancestors of the mammalian types that now
exist; others had run their race and passed away without
leaving any descendants. Great mastodons and elephants
roamed over various parts of what is now the United
States. Superb specimens of these most perfectly pre-
served in their skeletal structure, have been taken in
New Jersey, New York and elsewhere. In one locality in
Kentucky over one hundred skeletons of mastodons were
obtained. Enormous bisons or buffaloes also existed over
the same areas, together with ponderous beavers and
gigantic horses. A great lion also roamed over the same
region, as did also a great elk, much exceeding in size
our now-existing elk of the Rocky Mountains. Many
other very remarkable forms also flourished, making to-
gether a list of far too great length for enumeration in the
present connection.

Passing down rapidly next through the Tertiary sys-
tem of the Cenozoic age, we discover that the first mam-
mals of all arose at its dawn. They came in immense
numbers, in swarms, indicating that the revolutions then
going on on the earth gave rise to a marked rapidity of
change in the varied representatives of that group. Dur-
ing those times climates were adjusting themselves;
enormous and extensive migration of species was going
on; and as a result thereof an extinction of all those
forms which could not withstand the commingling of the
various geographical faunas. Herbivorous animals pre-
dominate but others are not wanting, and a vast array of
orders and species ranged over the central portion of this
country. Lemurne monkeys were even to be seen, though
the earlier forms of men had apparently not yet made
their appearance. Indeed it is the mid-regions of the
United States, and in the freshwater basins there found
that we find the very richest deposits wherein occur the
fullest records of the mammalian faunas of the Cenozoic

ON BIOLOGY. 49

age in America. In the bad lands of Nebraska, for in-
stance, have been discovered the fossil remains of tigers,
camels, rodents, hyenas, panthers, wolf, deer, horses, rhi-
neros, and a variety of more generalized forms.

But among the main points to be remembered about all
those mammals of the Tertiary system is, that they arose
from small, non-placental forms which flourished during
the latter half of the Meozoic age, and that those forms
were in many ways yet intimately affined with birds and
reptiles. Reptile, indeed, was the main stem, and from
it branched off during the Triassic the bird and mammal
stock, and the linking types were to be found upon every
hand. Passing through the enormous lapse of time rep-
resented by the Cretaceans of Mesozoic, and successively
through the Eocene, Miocene and Pliocene of the Ter-
tiary, we find in the several parts of the United States, at
least, that from those small generalized types were pro-
duced the ancestors of the more modern mammalian
forms, a number of which have already been given above.
Among other remarkable forms there existed, for
example, in the Pliocene of the Niobrara Basin of our
Bad Land territory, several species of horses, one of
which was only two feet high; camels of ancient type,
and it is now recognized that both horse and camel orig-
inated upon this continent and not in the Orient as most
naturally suppose to be the case. As many of these early
mammals evolved, there was a gradual increase of the
brain-mass in many of the species; an elaboration of other
structures, as the teeth and feet; and a general tendency
toward the establishment of modern types. Indeed, in
all Nature there is no more engaging chapter in paleon-
tology than the great lesson taught by the specimens, and
specimens in abundance, showing the evolvement in time
of our modern horse as it has passed from the eohippus
of the Eocene, an animal no bigger than
a fox, with its four-toed feet in front and its three-toed
feet behind, and with its simple tooth-structure, through
the orohippus of the Middle Eocene; the mesohippus of the
Lower Miocene; the miohippus of the Miocene; and so
on up to recent time where we have the horses of the
present day. The gradual structural changes are perfect,
and the shad'ng from one series of fossil skeletal remains
to the next succeeding species is quite as imperceptible
as it is marvelous. And yet how widely separated are
the extremes, and what enormous lapses of time does
the entire process represent. Cope has traced, by means
of similar material, the development of the American

50 LECTURES

camels in the same manner; and it is a most extraordi-
nary picture when we come to study the clearness with
which this fossil material will permit us to trace the
branching stocks of oxen, deer, antelopes, hogs, and their
allies, or the ungulates as they are known, from the gen-
eralized common root-stock, the amblypoda, to their
modern forms. Other mammalian groups have been
worked out in the same way, as far as our discoveries
will admit, and doubtless in the future many of the gaps
will be filled in, and that is one of the most remarkable
chapters in the study of such remains, for the kinships of
each new species as it comes to light can be either very
closely guessed at, or its affinities are so strikingly
apparent, at first glance, as to admit of no manner of
doubt in the minds of all biologists.

It is important to remember, in connection with this,
that America, as was the case in other parts of the world,
passed through many remarkable physical revolutions
during the Tertiary age. In Cretaceous time, or just
before the Tertiary, it is known that this country was
divided into two great continents separated by a vast and
shallow sea covering all that area now familiar
to us as the Western Plains and Plateau region.
Subsequently mid-continental upheaval took place
and this cretaceous sea became slowly obliterated, and
the two aforesaid continents joined each other. The
tertiary period is now inaugurated by the Eocene epoch,
(and the shading of the one into the other, that is, the
Mesozoic and Cenozoic was most gradual), during which
time great freshwater lakes existed in certain parts of
the West, which during the Eocene were drained by
continental upheaval. Later Miocene lakes were formed
by a corresponding depression over the region of the
plains, and still later, toward the close of the same
period, the entire coast chain of mountains of the Pacific
Coast were formed by an uprising and folding of the sea
bottom. Other enormous changes took place, and an
authority at my hand states: "That from the end of
the Cretaceous to the end of the Tertiary there was a
gradual upheaval of the whole western half of the con-
tinent, by which the axis, or lowest line, of the great
interior continental basin was transferred more and more
eastward to its present position, the Mississippi River.
Probably, correlative with this upheaval of the western
half of the continent was the down sinking of the Mid-
Pacific bottom, indicated by coral reefs. Also as a con-
sequence of the same upheaval the erosive power of the

ON BIOLOGY. 51

rivers was greatly increased, and thus were formed those
deep canons in the regions (New Mexico, Colorado and
Arizona), where the elevation was greatest. Thus the
down sinking of the Mid-Pacific bottom, the bodily up-
heaval of the Pacific side of the continent, and the down
cutting of the river channels into those wonderful canons
are closely connected with each other."

It must not be understood that these vast depressions
and upheavals of great areas of territory were performed
in a rapid manner, for they required ages for their com-
pletion; indeed, In several parts of the earth very much
the same thing is going on under the very eye of science.
The coast of Norway, for example, is now rising at an
average rate of two and a half feet per century. Let
that continue for 1,000 centuries, and you may
easily understand what I mean by a geologic upheaval
of a land area. Still those great revolutions, notwith-
standing the gradualn^ss of their performance, did pow-
erfully affect in time the various faunae of the country,
and greatly influenced mammalian migration. In numer-
ous instances those migrations have been carefully
worked out and traced, traced as the several mammalian
faunae influenced by one cause or another passed from one
part of a continent to adjacent land areas. Those changes
in the habitats of entire groups of mammals went on in
obedience to certain ever-acting natural laws, for thou-
sands upon thousands of years, down to the present day.
Many types, as we have seen, became utterly extinct;
others by a slow evolution have left descendants in no
way resembling their original ancestors, while as a whole
the entire host of the world's mammalian faunae has led
up through those untold ages to quite perfectly explain
the laws of animal distribution as I have sketched them
for you to-day, and to thoroughly account for the pres-
ence in various parts of the earth of the animals as tney
now exist there. And, one other very important thing
must be noted, and it is that mammals, as has been the
case with most all other organized forms, since their first
appearance on the earth have passed from types of a
highly generalized structure, by evolution, to their des-
cendants of modern times wherein the structure is seen to
be far more highly specialized. This passage from the
simpler anatomical forms of mammals, all of which are
now extinct, to the more highly specialized types of the
existing faunas, has taken almost inconceivable ages of
time.

What has just been said about the evolution of the

52 LECTURES

mammalia is, with equal truth, applicable to the entire
history of organic life upon the globe, from its very be-
ginning as far back as we have been enabled to trace it
down to the present instant. Our knowledge of the
life-system of the earliest Archaean time is exceedingly
meager, but when we come to examine the old primor-
dial oeaches of the Silurian epochs we meet with fossil
forms that are the representatives of the faume which
figured at or very near the dawn of life upon earth, They
are the primordial ancestors of all the main branches of
animals, except vertebrates, which are to be found in
recent times. They are the earliest, structurally the
simplest, remains known to the biologist. They are the
elements from which Nature has bulk up the vast num-
ber of complicated organisms of our own era, and it is
easily demonstrable that it was many millions of years
ago that they existed. And yet, even this more or less
varied fauna of Silurian time must have been derived
from still .simpler forms, the history of which reaches far,
far back into the vast unknown— the unwritten pages of
geologic record.

By an overwhelming number of facts, then, biologists
of our own and of past times have demonstrated beyond all
manner of doubt that the distribution of all animals in
space, or in other words the existing world's faunas, is in
accordance with certain known laws, and that distribu-
tion is wholly explained by the distribution of all ani-
mals that have existed in time; or in other words the ex-
liuct world's faunas which, in turn, were also distributed
over the various regions of the earth in accordance with
laws, also largely known to us, are essentially the same
as those laws which account for the modern distribution
of organic life. One of the most philosophic living think-
ers in biology tersely paragraphed our knowledge upon
this point when he said:

"So long as each species of organism was
supposed to have had an independent origin,
the place it occupied on the earth's surface
or the epoch where it first appeared had
little significance. It was, indeed, perceived that
the organization and constitution of each animal or plant
must be adapted to the physical conditions in which it
was placed; but this consideration only accounted for a
few of the broader features of distribution, while the
great body of the facts, their countless anomalies and
curious details remained wholly inexplicable. But the
theory of evolution and gradual development of organic

ON BIOLOGY. 53

forms by descent and variation completely changes the
aspect of the question, and invests the facts of distri-
bution with special importance. The time when a group
or a species first appeared, the place of its origin and the
area it now occupies upon the earth, become essential
portions of the history of the universe.

"The course of study initiated and so largely developed
by Mr. Darwin has now shown us the marvelous inter-
dependence of every part of nature. Not only is each
organism necessarily related to and affected by all things,
living and dead, that surround it, but every detail of
form and structure, of color, food, and habits, must — it
is now held— have been developed in harmony with, and
to a great extent as a result of, the organic and inorganic
environments. Distribution becomes, therefore, as es-
sential a part of the science of life as anatomy or
physiology. It shows us, as it were, the form and struc-
ture of the life of the world considered as one vast
organism, and it enables us to comprehend, however im-
perfectly, the processes of development and variation dur-
ing past ages which have resulted in the actual state of
things.

"It thus affords one of the best tests of the truth of our
theories of development; because the countless facts pre-
sented by the distribution of living things in present and
past time must be explicable in accordance with any true
theory, or, at least, must never directly contradict it."
(Wallace, Art. Distribution, Brit. Encyclop., 9th Ed. V.
VII, p. 267.)

These truths, so well expressed, go far toward explain-
ing the relation that the science of biology bears to the
science of geology, for it clearly shows that
it is chiefly through the interdependent bi-
ologic science of palaeontology. At the dawn
of life the earliest organisms were of forms most simple,
and from them grew a mighty tree with myriads of
branches, limbs and twigs, and as these became differen-
tiated during enormous stretches of time they produced,
in the majority of cases, groups of organisms which were
more and more specialized and complex in structure. So
that during the almost inconceivable lapse of time repre-
senting earth's physical history, branches of this great
tree have gradually produced such remarkably specialized
groups of beings, as modern teleostean fishes, modern
reptiles, modern birds, modern mammals, and, as a fam-
ily of the latter, modern men.

The terminal twiglets of this vast organic growth and

54 LECTURES

its branching life-descent are now seen in the living
faunae existing upon the surface of the world of our day,
or teeming in our oceans and inland waters. Palaeontol-
ogy, the science of the organic forms of the past, imper-
ceptibly merges into zoology, the science of the organic
forms now in existence. And, this growth has never been
checked for an instant; the same laws are now in opera-
tion as have been in operation throughout all geologic
times and ages; many animals now in existence are
doomed to utter extinction, some in the near future,
others in ages to come. A host of others will send down
into futurity their descendants, and from them will un-
doubtedly arise, in time, new forms to furnish the world
with still different species, in many cases totally unlike
their nowaday ancestors, as those ancestors, the species
now with us, are totally unlike the forms from which
they in turn were derived. Even the topographical phys-
ical aspects of the world itself must change, as many,
many of those changes are now gradually going on and
are well known to science; their contemplation, and care-
ful study, and comparison with the happenings of past
ages, which in so many instances are so clearly written
upon Nature's historic pages, form one of the very grand-
est fields of research open to the intellectual activity of
the mini of man.

III.

Its Value as a Study.

We have seen in the first two lectures of the present
course what a very wide field of inquiry the science of
biology is now considered to cover. Indeed, any one of
its four main divisions of morphology, distribution,
physiology or aetiology constitutes a vast science in itself.
We saw how morphology dealt with the entire structure,
both gross and minute, of all animal and plant forms as
well as the relation of those structures to each other in
the organism. And, when we come to think of the
organic complexity of the great majority of the myriads
of different animals now living upon the earth, such a
task, alone, as unraveling their various plans of structure
would at first sight appear to be the labor of untold ages
for an infinite number of minds and hands. This un-
doubtedly would be the case were it not for the fact— a
fact long since known to biologists— that throughout the
entire series of animal forms and throughout the entire
series of plant forms, both living and extinct in either
case, and from the most simple type to the most complex,
there prevails the same fundamental uniformity in the
plan of structure. We may, for example, select any con-
venient form from the animal series, as a rabbit or a cat,
and after we have made a complete study of its entire
structure we have the key that unlocks the history of
the whole. From the cat, for instance, we may ascend
the scale, step by step, through the higher types, to in-
clude man himself, and it will be found that in the skele-
tons of all the bones are identically the same and require
but a common descriptive nomenclature. The viscera
and organs of the body are comparable throughout. The
arteries, veins, nerves and lymphatics in a cat, a lemur,
an ape and in man are strictly comparable, morphologi-
cally, and perform identically the same functions. There
are upward of 150 pairs of muscles or more in a cat, all
of which have been carefully described and named, yet

55

56 LECTURES

the corresponding ones pertain to the physical organiza-
tion of man, and no change in their nomenclature is
demanded.

And so we might pass on through the entire anatomy
of these several types; but this is not all, for we may
bring to bear all our most delicate instruments of pre-
cision, and by the aid of the microscope and chemical re-
agents reduce the body of a cat, or any of the other forms
mentioned, to their ultimate elements, and the very
morphological units — the cells — are the same in a cat as
they are in a man; the same in a lemur as they are in an
ape; the same in an ape as they are in a cat.

But, as we are all aware, the matter has not been al-
lowed to rest here, for the development of all these types
has been carefully studied; and in tracing this back in
man. in the cat, in the ape and the rest, we come to a
stage in each where the forms presented to us are quite
indistinguishable. One cannot help being impressed by
the expression of wonder seen in the face of him who, for
the first time, views accurate drawings of a tortoise, a
chicken, a dog, and a man, at the fourth week of their
development. It requires the eye of a thoroughly prac-
ticed investigator to tell the one from the other, you may
be well assured; for at that stage the tall even offers no
distinction and is quite as well developed in man as it is
in a dog. Carrying our investigations still further in this
matter of development we are led to the fact that all
animals have their origin in the simple cell.

"Moreover," as Huxley tells us, "the investigations of
the last three-quarters of a century have proved that
similar inquiries, carried out through all the different
kinds of animals which are met with in Nature, will lead
us, not in one straight series but by many roads, step by
step, gradation by gradation, from man at the summit
to specks of animated jelly at the bottom of the series.
So that the idea of Leibnitz and of Bonnet, that animals
form a great scale of being, in which there are a series
of gradations from the most complicated form to the
lowest and simplest; that idea, though not exactly in the
form in which it was propounded by those philosophers,
turns out to be substantially correct. More than this,
when biologists pursue their investigations into the vege-
table world, they find that they can* in the same way,
follow cut the structure of the plant, from the most
gigantic and complicated trees down through a similar
series of gradations until they arrive at specks of ani-

ON BIOLOGY 57

mated jelly, which they are puzzled to distinguish from
those specks which they reached by the animal road."

This great truth, so clearly stated by Huxley, no doubt
likewise expresses what has been the manner of growth
and development of plants and animals in the history of
the earth. No one who has properly examined the evi-
dence can now doubt for a moment that in the beginning
of the world the primitive material from which all ani-
mals and plants have since arisen was the absolutely
organless protoplasm. In other words we may say that
the history of the origin, growth and development of all
living forms in time is epitomized in the history of the
origin, growth and development of existing plants and
animals; just as the history of the origin, growth and
development of any individual species of animal is an
epitome of the history of the origin, growth and develop-
ment of the tribe to which that species belongs.

Passing to physiology, another one of our main divi-
sions of biology, we find all that holds true of structure
also holds true of the functions of the structures; and, in
the higher or more complex types of animals the func-
tions performed by the organs are complicated, but as we
study them in passing down the series we find they be-
come gradually more and more simple in their perform-
ance. Even the mental faculties form no exception to
this rule, for notwithstanding the marvelous workings of
the mind and the brain in the highest types of man, those
faculties can be traced down through the animal series
until at last we meet with their very rudiments as per-
formed by the brains of the lowest forms of animal life.
It was the distinguished British biologist, Mr. George J.
Romanes, who said in an admirable article published some
six or seven years ago in the North American Review:

"After centuries of intellectual conquest in all regions
of the phenomenal universe, man has at last begun to
find that he may apply in a new and most unexpected
manner the adage of antiquity, 'know thyself.' For he
has begun to perceive a strong probability, if not an ac-
tual certainty, that his own living nature is identical in
kind with the nature of all other life, and that even the
most amazing side of that nature — nay, the most amazing
of all things within the reach of his knowledge, the
human mind itself — is but the topmost inflorescence of
one mighty growth whose roots and stem and many
branches are sunk in the abyss of planetary time."

I have never been in sympathy with those observers
who would draw hard and fast lines, the lines of instinct

58 LECTURES

and of reason, between the lower forms of animal life on
the one hand and man on the other. For, I believe, as
great and as evident as the gap is which separates the
manifestations of the mental faculties of the very lowest
types of humanity and the very highest types of those
vertebrates next in order to them is simply a difference of
degree and not of kind.

We have also seen, in a former lecture, how the study
of another primary branch of biology, or the question of
distribution, explains the laws which govern the dis-
persal of animals and plants over the face of the globe
and in the great bodies of water of the earth, not only
for existing faunae, but for the vast faunas that have
existed since life first appeared in the world, and which
are now for the most part extinct.

Finally, in the fourth division of the science of biology,
or that is in aetiology, we saw how from the consideration
of the facts of the science we passed to the task of deter-
mining the causes of those facts. It is now thoroughly
appreciated that biological phenomena can be explained,
in so far as our present knowledge will permit, by consid-
ering the causes as simply special cases of general physi-
cal laws. There is no question dealt with under the
head of aetiology of greater importance than the investi-
gation of the origin of living matter, and upon entering
that field we meet with one group of investigators who
still adhere to the theory of abiogenesis, or what in real-
ity is the old theory of spontaneous generation, and an-
other group who are the -supporters of the biogenetic
view, which contends that all living beings have been
derived from pre-existing forms of life. This latter is
termed the theory of biogenesis. Very close reasoning is
done upon both sides, but at the bottom of it all it can-
not be said that we are in possession of any positive
knowledge upon the subject. Still, I believe it lies
within the pale of attainable knowledge, and is a problem
that will be satisfactorily solved by the biologists of the
future.

With this brief recapitulation of the scope of biology be-
fore us, we now may ask of what value, as a study, does this
greatscience, this comprehensive department of human
knowledge offer to mankind at large? To properly answer
this it will be necessary to say a few words upon the ques-
tion as to wherein lies the value of the pursuit of any
study, and apply our finding to the pursuit of the study
of biology. With respect to any of the sciences, my
opinion has always been that the discoveries of truths

ON BIOLOGY. 59

and facts constitute the most important, the mos*; practi-
cal and the most noble field into which men can throw
their best mental and physical energies. History has
long ago proved that however apparently a present-day-
discovered fact may seem to be of utter worthlessness,
owing to its non-applicability to utilitarian ends, such
facts invariably come into the very best play in the hands
of succeeding generations. Thousands upon thousands
of examples might be cited to sustain this statement,
drawing them from every department of human
knowledge. The only thing demanded is that the dis-
covery be a real truth, a living fact. Such discovered
facts have often lain idle for a generation or more when,
owing to later discoveries of, perhaps, a related kind,
they at last are brought into use with amazing power, and
frequently prove to be of lasting value and worth to all
humanity.

Now, for more than a century past, the most extraor-
dinary thing about the discovery of biological facts is
that in the vast majority of instances, comparatively
speaking, they so rapidly come to meet some utilitarian
end in one or another line of human pursuits.

In the first place very often the discovery of a new fact
in biology has the tendency to eradicate some wrong idea
and replace that wrong idea by the right one. The first
may have been entertained for ages, by men all over the
world, and have been the source of much bad practice
and, perhaps, of downright misery to generations of peo-
ple. No one for an instant will question the utility and
importance of this, inasmuch as ideas rule the world and
it is of the highest import that those ideas should be the
correct ones. In short the world can only be made happy
when truth prevails, and the foundations of all our
theories of things, all our practices and all our ideas are
governed by truth and fact.

To instance my meaning, human history offers no bet-
ter example, as a whole, than the contest that has been
going on for ages between man, upon the one hand, and
the entire category of diseases and injuries to which his
organism is subject, upon the other. In the early history
of medicine and in the early history of humanity, hosts
upon hosts of men, women and children perished from
diseases, during every generation, from the sheer lack of
knowledge on the part of their fellows of what was the
correct thing to do for them. But what was worse than
all this, when men calling themselves physicians essayed
during those times to combat the results of injuries or

60 LECTURES

the ravages of disease in their fellows, such was the na-
ture of their knowledge and the mtagerness of its amount,
that in the vast majority of cases the would-be helper
was a far greater danger to the sufferer than the disease
with which he was afflicted. In truth, it may be stated,
that in the day to which I refer the gentlemen of the
medical profession were responsible for the destruction of
the lives of a greater number of people than was disease
itself. The reason is not far to seek, for the constitutions
of those attacked by disease had not only to contend with
that disease, but, in addition thereto, with the medical
man who came to cure them. This is not surprising
when we come to think how limited was the then knowl-
edge of the laws of sanitation; of the real causes of many
of the infectious maladies; and, finally, which is the more
important of all, the prevalence of the most erroneous
ideas of both the science of anatomy and the science of
physiology.

Since those times biology has grown apace, and both
medicine and surgery or, I may say, the profession of
medicine in its entirety, has felt the remarkable advances
made along the lines I have just indicated. Not only
has medicine favorably felt the nature of those advances,
but in that most important and practical rield of human
endeavor, has been clearly shown the value of biological
study. Through such studies alone, it has been proven
beyond all manner of doubt that infectious disorders are
caused by living organisms, and by combating them, in
one way or another, those disorders may be either cured
or prevented altogether. An ever increasing knowledge
of the structure and physiology of all animals, both high
and low in the scale of organization, has, moreover, al-
lowed pathologists to trace, in some instances, the more
complicated fofms of disease in men to their rudimentary
phases in the lower animals. It is clear that by such
processes we will in time be enabled to arrive at a com-
plete history and knowledge of many of the affections of
the various structures of our bodies. And this has come
about by the ever increasing biological investigations into
the anatomy and physiology of all forms of animal life.
Not only have such biological studies been of the greatest
importance to man in the way of his own personal wel-
fare, comfort and happiness, but they have extended to
his material belongings, for the possession of such in-
creased knowledge has been of the most unlimited service
in the treatment of the infectious disorders and the
surgical injuries to which all the domesticated animals

ON BIOLOGY. 61

are liable. Moreover, the investigations in those fields
have again reacted, and to the end of still further
elucidating a number of the more complex problems in
human pathology. Surely there is no one among us
to-day who for a moment doubts the value of the biologi-
cal researches that are now almost hourly being made
upon the structure and life-histories of myriads of germs
that cause disease; or of the value of the labors of the
world's "corps of patient biologists who are continually
engaged in furnishing us with a fuller understanding of
the morphology and physiology of those structures which
those many species of germs are prone to attack. Such
studies are most assuredly fraught with results of great
practical value, and are of the very highest importance.
Justice to this subject could hardly be attained to in an
entire course of lectures, and the interesting field it
covers is reflected in an extremely rich and varied
literature.

Again, the value of the most exhaustive researches in
general morphology can hardly be questioned; for, in the
first place, as I have just shown, they not only have the
great practical value of elucidating the more obscure
points in man's own organization, but through the enor-
mous array of facts arrived at, biologists have been
enabled to fix beyond all peradventure of a doubt the po-
sition man occupies in Nature and his true relation to the
universe at large. This has had the effect of completely
explpding that old traditional notion, that ancient myth,
the embodiment of the idea that man constituted the
great central figure in Nature, and held a position alto-
geth'er peculiar; that structurally, physiologically, men-
tally and psychologically he was completely disassociated
from all the rest of the living forms of this world; indeed,
that he was hardly of this world at all, but was to be
considered as simply a being existing here only tempo-
rarily and but very remotely related co any and all things
of earth, upon which he had but recently come and upon
which his race expected to sojourn as probationers but a
comparatively brief time; and, finally, what was more or
quite as erroneous as all the rest of this strange tradi-
tional notion put together, that, somehow or other, he
thus being apart from Nature all the rest of the world
had been especially created either for his personal bene-
fit; or as affording him an array of natural objects for hi
especial amusement; or for, as I say, a temporary abiding
place, tastefully fitted up, to answer as a habitation dur-
ing his brief sojourn upon the earth. Biological research

62 LECTURES

has here most conclusively shown, whether It be tasteful
for us to face the truth and the facts In the premises or
not, that not a single factor in this old traditional notion,
which has been told to so many of us, has the slightest
semblance to verity to recommend it. Biological research
has given us the true relation that man bears to Nature,
and has most clearly demonstrated where his place is
there. For it has shown that no such things exist in Na-
ture as what may be called "central figures," and man's
position in the universe is no more peculiar than is the
representative of any other family of the class to which
he belongs — that is, the class mammalia. Outside of his
own family man is both structurally and physiologically
most closely linked to those mammalian forms in the
group next below him, or to the anthropoids.

After making a comparison of all the minutest details
of structure, it was Professor St. George Mivart who was
compelled to admit that: "Viewed from the anatomical
standpoint, man is but one species of the order Primates;
and he even differs far less from the higher apes than do
these latter from the inferior forms of the order." (Less.
in Elem. Anat., p. 496.) Further, biological research has
shown that all of the various groups of existing men,
from the very lowest racial types to the highest and best
representatives, are quite of this world and form just as
much a part of its history as any other factor composing
the realm of nature. There is no valid evidence to show
that his stay upon the earth is to be a temporary .one,
and a great deal of very excellent biological evidence
to show that he has existed here for a great many
thousands of years. And as to all the rest of Nature' hav-
ing been especially created for his benefit and pleasure, I
can only say tnat it is hardly necessary for me, in this
day and generation, to adduce the simple arguments re-
quired to prove the absurdity of any such notion. Every
page in the history of man, since the day he first was
enabled to make record of his earthly career, reeks with
pain, with misery and with unhappiness. Man has had
to contend with the elements just as fiercely as other
living organisms of the world; he has had to contend even
far more strenuously against the ravages of disease and
accident; all over the world Nature presents the majority
of mankind with objects that are anything but pleas-
urable for his beholding; and, finally, for I will not multi-
ply the many examples that could easily be brought for-
ward, men are even so constituted that they continually
war upon each other and by so doing offer thousands of

ON BIOLOGY. 63

spectacles to the more peaceful side of society that can
hardly be designated as pleasurable or beneficial ones in
Nature's drama.

Yet, in face of all this, science has emphasized what
must be patent to any thinking mind, and that is, apart
from the similarity of his anatomical structure as com-
pared with other mammals there is at least one thing
that widely separates man from all else in living Nature.
But its teachings are also to be found in one of the vol-
umes devoted to biology, viz., in the science of psychol-
ogy. From the psychical point of view the vast abyss
that separates man from all the rest of living creation is
so wide and so profound that there can be but little dan-
ger in overestimating either its width or its profundity.
Speaking of this aspect of the question it has been said
that: "Man must be set off not only against the animal
kingdom but against the whole of Nature besides, are an
equivalent: Nature the book — the revelation— and man
the interpreter."

"So in the history of the earth; from one point of view
the era of man is not equivalent to an era, nor to an
age, not to a period, nor even to an epoch. But from an-
other point of view it is the equivalent of the whole
geological history of the earth besides. For the history
of the earth finds its consummation, and its interpreter,
and its significance in man." (Leconte.)

Not to weary you, I should like to adduce another es-
ample wherein the value of biological study has been
most abundantly proved within a comparatively short
space of time. It is perfectly safe to say that within the
last half century the entire theory of agriculture has
been completely revolutionized. From the crudest no-
tions and ideas, as they were put into practice by the
tillers of the soil both in this country and in Europe
during the early part of the present century, agri-
culture has grown to occupy a place among the sciences.
This has come about through the marvelous advances
made incur knowledge of physiological botany; in the
pathology and morphology of plants generally, and the
principles applied to those cultivated by the agricultur-
ist. To the vast store of facts that have been discovered
bearing upon general entomology, and in particular to
the study of the life histories of that enormous host of
species of insects which are either beneficial or injurious
to garden vegetables, fruit trees, grains, cultivated shrubs
and the like. In similar directions even knowledge of
another kind is coming into play, and our own Depart-

64 LECTURES

ment of Agriculture here is vigorously pursuing a line of
study that in the future must surely have its use for the
agriculturist. This is nothing less than the pursuance
of a systematic investigation of the contents of the stom-
achs of all our species of United States birds at all sea-
sons of the year. The object here aimed at is to encour-
age the protection and presence of those species of birds
which are ascertained to destroy those insects which are
known agricultural 'pests; and, on the other hand, to
either drive away or destroy those species which prove by
their habits or food to be injurious in any way to the suc-
cess of the agriculturalist. Such a field of research has
been termed a Department of Economic Ornithology, and
of course demands a scientific and practical application
of the facts brought to light by the biologist. Agricul-
ture is usually made to include the care, breeding and
study of the domesticated animals; and the recent Im-
provements and successes along such lines are entirely
due to the researches of the biologists, for they have
come about through a fuller knowledge of the morphol-
ogy of animals, the physiology of animals, of the dis-
eases to which they are liable and the nature of the para-
sites which infest them; and of the laws pertaining to
artificial selection in breeding, and kindred matters.

Once more, and it is familiar to most of us, the excellent
results that have rewarded the efforts of our National
Fish Commission. Here is a scientific body interested
in the protection, propagation and extension of our food
fishes, oysters and the like, and it almost goes without
the saying that their successes depend upon the proper
application of the knowledge of the facts discovered by
the icthyologist of the habits, foods, and general economy
of the enormous list of species of our fresh and salt water
fishes. And, so far as the oyster is concerned, certain
biologists have well-nigh devoted their life's work to its
complete study, and the practical economist has not been
slow in seizing upon the results of his researches and
turning them to practical account.

Finally, it may in truth be said that our studies in the
direction of the structure and physiology of all fprms of
plant and animal life cannot be in any way too ex-
haustive, for the results attained are sure, sooner or later,
to come powerfully into play to the furtherance of the
best of human interests, and it is hard to say more than
this. To the same end our material progress is furthered
in certain fields, in proportion as we come in possession of
a full knowledge of the geographical distribution, the

ON BIOLOGY. 65

habits, the various foods and the life-histories of all
animals, all living organisms, whatsoever, as well as
everything possible to be known of plant Mfeboth in space
and in time. Everything is to be gained by a vigorous
pushing of the study of both normal and pathological
histology in every possible direction, by which we mean
an attainment of a knowledge of the intimate structure
of the tissues in every living organism, both animal and
vegetable, and the various diseases which may affect the
same.

Did my time but admit of it it. would, in a similar
manner, not be difficult for me to show that the most
valuable and practical results are sure to follow in the
wake of our increased knowledge of such other biological
sciences as palaeontology, aetiology, sociology and
psychology.

Many have been the triumphs of biology in the past,
and in many departments of science and learning; bul,
as great as those have been, I am constrained to believe
that still greater ones are to be met and dealt with in the
future. Many of the grander conquests I have already
referred to or in some degree explained. These are
mainly the elucidation and establishment of an infinite
number of facts forming a basis upon which is safely
reared the doctrine of the theory of descent of all animal
and plant forms, both in space and in time. Second, the
revealing of the fact that a uniform and fundamental
plan of structure pervades all Nature, and as depending
thereon we find that the same holds true with regard to
function. Thirdly, that the present distribution of ani-
mal and plant forms over all parts of the earth are most
perfectly explained by the far-reaching researches that
biology has accomplished in palaeontology. Lastly, the
invaluable results that have rewarded biological investi-
gators in the fields of comparative psychology and
sociology.

These having been some of the major achievements of
the science, I desir , for the purpose I have in view, to
simply recall to your memories some of the more inter-
esting facts that biology has brought to light, as inci-
dental to the main laws just enumerated. They all most
powerfully tend to establish the value of biological
research, both as a study from a purely utilitarian point
of view, and as a most efficient adjunct to the proper
training of the human intellect.

For a long time morphologists, in their dissections of
all manner of plants and animals, met with structures

66 LECTURES

which came to be called "rudimentary organs," but
more properly known now as "vestigial structures" or
organs. As examples of these we may cite the teeth in
the upper jaw in the embryos of many of the ruminat-
ing animals — as in the case of the embryos of our com-
mon cattle. These teeth never fully develop, are func-
tionless and of absolutely no importance to the animal.
Teeth also occur in the jaws of young whales that have a
similar history, for as we know iu the adult whale the
jaws only support the baleen or whalebone, and the total
teeth in them entirely disappear, never having had any
physiological importance.

Quite a long list of similar vestigial structures occur
in every man, woman and child among us, and it was
utterly impossible to make out the purpose of their being
there until biology stepped in to render the proper ex-
planation. Among birds we find, in one species or an-
other, rudimentary wings incapable of being used in
flight, and in most all ordinary birds a vestigial chumb
in the hand. Snakes have a rudimentary lung, and
rudimentary mammw occur among the males of the
mammalia. In some lizards the vestigial limbs and the
skeletal arches that support them are entirely concealed
from superficial view by the skin covering the body;
this is also the case with the hind limbs in a whale.
Plants everywhere offer us hundreds of like examples.
Plenty of cases of rudimentary and sightless eyes occur
in various species, which now pass their existence under-
ground. But the name of these structures is legion, and
scarcely a living organism exists that offers us not one or
more examples, so it is quite out of the question to give
the list, in extenso, of them here, and as for that in-
stances enough have already been cited.

Of these vestigial organs, Mr. Darwin has said that:
"By whatever steps they may have been degraded into
their present useless condition are the record of a former
state of things, and have been retained solely through
the power of inheritance. We can understand, on the
genealogical view of classification, how it is that system-
atists, in placing organisms in their proper places in the
natural system, have often found rudimentary parts as
useful as or even sometimes more useful than parts of
higii physiological importance. Rudimentary organs
may be compared with the letters in a word, still retained
in the spelling but become useless in the pronunciation,
but which serve as a clew for its derivation. On the view
of descent with modification, we may conclude that the

ON BIOLOGY. 67

existence of organs in a rudimentary, imperfect and use-
less condition, or quite aborted, far from presenting a
strange difficulty, as they assuredly do on the old doc-
trine of creation, might even have been anticipated in ac-
cordance with the views here explained." (Origin of
Species, p. 402.)

Another magnificent array of interesting and most im-
portant facts have been brought to light in the course of
the innumerable researches that have led to the discovery
that all our domesticated animals, as pigeons, the various
tame fowls, cattle, dogs, horses and cats have all been de-
rived from wild types, each within the group to which it
severally belongs. Darwin proved, after years of patient
and most scientifically conducted experiments upon the
very richest kind of material obtainable in all the world,
that all the vast list of varieties of domesticated pigeons
were derived from a single wild species — or from the
common blue rock-pigeon, Columba lima, the primary
stock. In a similar manner have all the remarkable
forms of domesticated rabbits been traced back to the
common wild rabbit, which has proved to be the original
primary species from which they were all undoubtedly
derived. Many of the domesticated species of rabbits are
now so utterly different, both in internal structure and
external form, that they are more widely separated,
morphologically, from the common wild type than the
latter is from any other wild species in any part of the
world.

Illustrating this point in another way, a distinguished
German naturalist says: "In the year 1419, a few rabbits,
born on board ship of a tame Spanish rabbit, were put on
the island of Porto Santo, near Madeira. These little
animals, there being no beasts of prey, in a short time
increased so enormously that they became a pest to the
country, and even compelled a colony to remove from
the island. They still inhabit the island in great num-
bers; but in .the course of four hundred and fifty years
they have developed into a quite peculiar variety — or, if
you will have it, into a "good species"— which is dis-
tinguished by a peculiar color, a rat-like shape, small
size, nocturnal life, and extraordinary wildness."
(Haeckel.) It is most important to note now, however,
that this new species (L. huxleyi) will not cross with speci-
mens of the original European domesticated stock, and
.n one or two instances where they have they are infertile,
thus proving that they are thoroughly differentiated as a
species.

68 LECTURES

When in the West, a number of years ago, and often
in the camps of our Sioux Indians, I found it in many
instances difficult to distinguish their dogs from the wild
prairie wolf or coyote from which undoubtedly all were
derived originally. In some cases, however, the better
differentiated species were quite distinct and very dif-
ferent appearing animals. The parent stock of all our
remarkable breeds of chickens is beyond all doubt the
ordinary wild chicken of India, the Gallus bankiva of
ornithologists; and, personally, 1 satisfied myself of this
fact, not long ago, by a most careful comparison of the
entire structure of alcoholic specimens of the India
species sent me from India for the very purpose, with
numerous species of our common fowls, comparing the
skeletons and structure for structure throughout. Among
the domesticated species the game fowls come nearest the
original wild parent stock, and yet, in appearance, what
a wide gap exists between them, for instance, and the
extraordinary Polish cocks. In comparing our common
tame turkey, anatomically, with a fine series of the
wild turkeys which I had collected for the purpose, I not
only satisfied myself that our domesticated form was
derived from the wild one, but I succeeded in obtaining
a series of skeletons «which showed all the striking dif-
ferences in beautiful serial arrangement, standing as they
did between the two extremes.

I might go on citing such cases by the hour, and multi-
ply the examples in an endless variety, but enough has
been presented to show what biology is bringing out
along the lines given. The literature in such fields is
now simply enormous, and the study of the entire ques-
tion of hybrids, artificial selection, interbreeding,
sterility, and the production of new species and sub-
species, is not only fraught with great value but it has
had the effect of being of the most incalculable benefit to
the breeder of domestic stock of all kinds, as well as
throwing a powerful light upon the entire question of the
doctrine of descent and the origin of species as we find
them in Nature. Why, when Darwin wrote his two
volumes, on "Animals and Plants under Domestication,"
they were used more by the scientific agriculturists and
breeders the world over, for the practical and useful in-
formation they contained, than they were by the op-
ponents of the theory of descent to study the arguments
set forth in them, in their endeavors to defeat the same
— and this is saying a great deal.

There are several other very beautiful laws presented

ON BIOLOGY. 69

on the part of Nature, the operations of which are still
but imperfectly known to the biologist, and to these we
can but barely allude. There are the several phases of
the general law of correlations, as exemplified in many
ways both on the part of animals and of plants; of the
laws of the relations existing between organisms, on the
one hand, and all that goes to the make-up climate on the
other; of the laws of protective resemblances among
animals and plants; of parthenogenesis and other peculiar
forms of reproduction; of the laws of variation, and the
effects of use and disuse of organs; of the laws of the ex-
tinction of species, and of persistent types of animals; and
some few others which show those delicate compensations,
equilibriums and balancings that are ever in operation
throughout all Nature and of which we yet ha,ve so very
imperfect a knowledge. Still, to some extent, we have
been enabled to arrange and classify those laws, and these
classifications will become more perfecc as the examples
they present become better understood. Upon every
hand, however, cause and effect are seen to be un-
ceasingly in action, and ever with an absolutely unvary-
ing exactitude whatever may be the nature or class of
cases wherein it is seen. The balancements are sustained
everywhere with a precision admitting of no variation
whatever; all cells moving in harmony at all instants of
time, and in obedience to uncompromising laws. No field
could be more inviting to the biologist for his investi-
gations and his meditations, as a few examples which I
select from various biological authorities will go far
toward showing.

A number of years ago I had under my observation a
man that possessed six fingers upon either hand, and he
had several sisters and a brother exhibiting the same
monstrosity. In some of the cases, however, but one
hand showed it; and a brother in the family had normal
hands. Only one of this man's parents, his father, I
think, showed the condition, and in all the number of
toes on the feet were normal. In such
cases the numeral relation of the toes and
fingers vary, but if a six-fingered and six-toed man should
marry a woman exhibiting the same digital characters,
and propagation were to be kept up for generations by
puropinbreeding the character would become perma-
nently established and result in a special race of such peo-
ple. Haeckel says: "In a Spanish family, each child ex-
cept the youngest had the number six on both hands and
feet; the youngest, only, had the usual number on both

70 LECTURES

hands and feet, and the six-fingered father of the child
refused to recognize the last one as his own." I must let
an example of this kind stand as a representation of the
thousand and one other characters that are inherited by
children from their ancestors in every part of the world.
Indeed, this matter of inheritance in so very common,
both in the case of normal characters as well as abnormal
ones or even in diseases or the predisposition to the same,
also habits and traits, that they are scarcely noticed in
our everyday life. All animals and plants exhibit the
same tendency, and instead of it being a matter of light
import the entire law is one of the very greatest biologi-
cal importance, and has been dealt with under the gen-
eral law of heredity and inheritance; the first having
reference to the power of transmission and the latter to
actual transmission. These when taken in connection
with the now well-proved fact of the mutability af
organisms, it at once becomes apparent to any one of us
how important it is to well examine and study the re-
sulting phenomena. This applies especially to the
biologist, and to the scientific and thoughtful physician.
Connected with this law we have to deal with another,
or the one referring to the question of the alternation of
generations, where inherited characters are known to skip
one or more generations; and this law, pushed to the ex-
treme, explains the matter of reversion or atavism. An
excellent illustrative example of the last are those cases
wherein we sometimes see a horse born with series of dis-
tinct stripes of black arranged in a definite way on the
body and limbs. No such character ever occurred in its
ancesters so far as they can be traced back, and the con-
dition can alone be explained by atavism, or in other
words the original stock of all of the horses from which
such an individual is descended was a striped animal or
a striped race or family, something like the now wild
zebras, quaggas, etc.— existing horse-like animals in Na-
ture. In ages to come such cases of atavism will un-
doubtedly, and not unfrequently, arise through inter-
marriage of the hybrid descendants among us of
Ethiopian and Caucasian stock. One has but to study in
this city the very numerous and extremely light-colored
hybrids of Afro-Caucasian species which are now annu-
ally making their appearance to understand this. In fact,
I have collected one good example of this for use in my
anthropological studies. A man of undoubted Saxon des-
cent married a woman as white as himself, and whose
ancestors had been white for a generation or two before

ON BIOLOGY.

her, very likely for a longer time. Their first child was
as black as the veriest Congo that ever was born. When
we come to consider that hybridization between the two
races has been going on since the earliest days of slavery
in this country, and bringing our knowledge of the laws
of inheritance to our aid, especially the atavistic phase
of them, such a case needs no particular explanation at
the present time.

Still another law, or the law of sexual transmission,
offers many curious cases; that is where one of the sexes
suddenly exhibits a character or characters which
normally only belong to the opposite one. Under this we
find those peculiar examples of women having full beards
and mustachios; does among deer, with fully developed
antlers; hens wearing the spurs of the cock; and hun-
dreds of other most remarkable cases to which I forbear
to allude at the present time. They are phenomena of
great importance to the biologist in his studies of the
operation of natural laws.

Even the question of hybridism has a literature and a
broad field of study of its own to-day. Examples of this
are common all over the world and in many quarters are
receiving the most exact investigation possible, which its
high importance so fully deserves.

Some half a dozen other laws have been carefully dif-
ferentiated and elucidated by the biologists, and an end-
less series of examples occur upon all hands in Nature to
fully illustrate them. The whole question of adaptation
also presents us with its numerous well-defined laws, and
their exemplification in the animal and vegetable worlds.
Their comprehension is absolutely essential to the student
who would understand the operations daily being enacted
in the natural world about him, on every hand, by every
form of living organism.

For the present, however, we cannot enter further into
these fields, and at the most I feel I have brought ample
evidence before you wherewith to prove the undoubted
value that attaches to the study of the biological sciences.

This being so, the very practical question next arises,
or questions I may say, of, first, to whom should biology
be taught; when and where should that instruction be
given; and what are the best methods for imparting the
necessary knowledge of the science. To these several in-
quiries I would answer that I would make its main
principles and laws, its essential truths, a prerequisite to
the examination of every accepted teacher for a public
school throughout the United States, in order that it

72 LECTURES

might be properly taught in all our public schools;
similarly it should be entered into the scheme of edu-
cation of every private school, college and university
throughout the land; a very complete course in biology
most assuredly should form a part of the curriculum of
every authorized medical college in America; and finally,
it should reach the people through public lectures, public
museums, zoological gardens, and public libraries and
laboratories.

At the outstart, it may be said, in general terms, that
the means to be employed in teaching biology
consist in the handling and proper examina-
tion of biological material. To this end we employ
dissections of existing organisms; histological researches
with the microscopes and other instruments of precision;
next, the making of drawings and sketches of the objects
we have observed and studied; then, physiological
studies, wherein will come vivisections, various con-
trivances to exhibit the fundamental principles of the
science; and the application of the abiological sciences of
chemistry and physics. We employ all manner of illus-
trative specimens; as biological material in alcohol,
models of all descriptions, the skins of animals preserved
in the various ways, diagrams of all kinds — both of
natural size and enlarged — colored or uncolorea, also
palseontological material, together with full series of
geological and physical charts exhibiting the distribution
of plants and animals both in space and in time. The
literature of biology is to be freely used, and a very im-
portant part of the instruction depends upon lectures,
the museums, collections of animals and plants, and the
zoological gardens.

As to the general methods to be adopted in biological
study, Mr. Huxley presents us with some excellent advice
when he says: "Since biology is a physical science, the
methods of studying it must needs be analogous to that
which is followed in the other physical sciences. It has
now long been recognized that, if a man wishes to be a
chemist it is not only necessary that he should read
chemical books and attend chemical lectures, but that
he should actually perform the fundamental experiments
in the laboratory for himse.f, and thus learn exactly what
the words which he finds in his books and hears from his
teachers mean."

"If he does not do so, he may read till the crack of
doom, but he will never know much about chemistry.
That is what every chemist will tell you, and the physi-

ON BIOLOGY. 73

cist will do the same for his branch of science. The great
changes and improvements in physical and chemical
scientific education which have taken place of late have
all resulted from the combination of practical teaching
with the reading of books and with the hearing of lec-
tures. The same thing is true in biology. Nobody will
ever know anything about biology except in a dilettante
'paper-philosopher' way, who contents himself with read-
ing books on botany, zoology and the like; and the reason
of'this is simple and easy to understand. It is that all
language is merely symbolical of the things of which it
treats; the more complicated the things, the more bare is
the symbol and the more its verbal definition requires to
be supplemented by the information derived directly
from the handling, and the seeing and the touching of
the thing symbolized; that is really what is at the bot-
tom of the whole matter. It is plain common sense, as
all truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified.
If you want a man to be a tea merchant, you don't tell
him to read books about China or about tea, but you put
him into a tea merchant's office where
he has the handling, the smelling and the
tasting of teas. Without the sort of knowledge
which can be gained only in this practical way his ex-
ploits as a tea merchant will soon come to a bankrupt
termination. The 'paper-philosophers' are under the
delusion that physical science can be mastered as literary
accomplishments are acquired, but unfortunately it is
not so. You may read any quantity of books, and you may
be almost as ignorant as. you were at starting if you don't
have, at the back of your minds, the change for words in
definite images which can only be acquired through the
operation of your observing faculties on the phenomena
of Nature."

The preliminary methods of procedure in biological
study here pointed out by Professor Huxley were given
to a New York audience by him as long ago as 1876, but
those methods have been true for all time and are es-
pecially applicable in these days. Indeed researches con-
ducted in precisely the manner pointed out by the most
distinguished expounder of biological science we have
living, the author whom I have just quoted, have come
to be spoken of by everyone who has the progress of
human learning at heart as the "scientific method." Now
to me, the modern "scientific method" in any kind of
investigation or research means nothing more than, first,
having one thoroughly acquaint himself with all of

74 LECTURES

importance that has previously been written upon the
subject, or matter, or organism he proposes to examine;
next, to make that examination as carefully as possible,
and as thoroughly comparative as his material will ad-
mit, bringing to his aid the various modern instruments
of precision used by biologists or other scientists in their
own departments, and, finally, also summoning to his
assistance a clear knowledge of those natural laws as they
are at present understood and have bearing upon the
question in hand. To complete any such investigation
it should be printed, free from error, and in some medium
where it will become easily available for the students of
the future, and show upon every page, plate, and figure
of the record that its author had carried out in detail
every suggestion that I have just presented; that he has
properly accredited former workers in the same fields
with such facts as their prior labors revealed; that he is
candid, clear, thorough, logical, and guided by the desire
to discover only the truth in every detail to which he has
directed his mind during the task he has set himself to
perform.

It goes without the saying that the principal field de-
manding the attention of the biologist is that one which
takes Into consideration the life-histories, morphology,
and physiology of all living animal organisms and plants.
Such studies are chiefly made in the biological laboratories,
the museums, and the zoological gardens, the former
always being properly fitted up with the proper ap-
pliances and text-books for that kind of research.

Remembering now what has been said on the question
of the fundamental uniformity of structure, as exempli-
fied in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, it will at
once be appreciated that it obviates the necessity of the
student in zoology studying separately each and all the
entire series of species representing the existing world's
fauna on the one hand, and her flora on the other. We
can easily see how impossible such a task would be of ac-
complishment, inasmuch as there are considerably over
100,000 insects alone, and the species of plants in the
world is simply enormous. Fortunately, and taking in-
sects for example, which we have just mentioned, we
have such things as what may be regarded as more or
less type-forms in all the great groups of animals and
plants, and by making a proper selection of one of these
among the insects, and mastering all that can be known
of its life-history, structure, and so forth, it is quite
possible to gain a very fair conception of the correspond-

ON BIOLOGY. 75

ing facts as they are presented on the part of the vast
majority of insects. With a definite knowledge of that
much at his command, and especially a comprehension
of the nomenclature used in the description of the various
structural parts, the student will find that the transition
to the study of those modifications in the anatomy of
other insect forms is natural and not difficult, so that by
the study of a comparatively few more well-chosen speci-
mens he soon acquires a wide understanding of the whole,
and is capable of comprehending the most of what he
reads in his text-books on the subject.

In a similar manner one may master the Jfe-histories,
the morphology and physiology of a number of well-
selected specimens or types of the lower and higher
forms of plant life, when it is soon ascertained that he
has at his command the knowledge which permits him
to comprehend more or less of the history, origin, devel-
opment and growth of the entire vegetable kingdom.
Thereafter, special modifications presented on the part
of peculiar forms of plant-life are easily understood with
scarcely any additional labor. Types of the vnrious
groups of the invertebrate* should be examined and com-
pared in a like method, all the way from an amoeba up to
a erood typical beetle.

Passing next to the vertebrates, good representatives of
all the main groups shouM be examined in the same
way; the various structures thoroughly intercompared;
studied by means of diagrams; and accounts of their
anatomy reviewed in the best text-books on the subject,
Useful types for this purpose are seen in the well-known
lancelet; in a typical shark or ray; any teleosteon fish;
the frog; a turtle; any ordinary bird form, as the common
fowl; and, finally, some type mammal, which may be
met by either the common cat or the rabbit. This is the
plan adopted by the best biological laboratories both in
this country and abroad, and of its aims a prominent
instructor has said: "The purpose of this course is not
to make skilled dissectors, but to give every student a
clear and definite conception, by means of sense-images,
of the characteristic structure of each of the leading
modifications of the animal kingdom; and that is per-
fectly possible, by going no farther than the length of
the list of forms which I have enumerated. If a man
knows the structure of the animals I have mentioned he
has a clear and exact, however limited, apprehension of
the essential features of the organization of all those
great divisions of the animal and vegetable kingdoms to

76 LECTURES

which the forms I have mentioned severally belong.
And it then becomes possible for him to read with profit;
because every time he meets with the name of a struc-
ture he has a definite image in his mind of what the
name means in the particular creature he is reading
about, and, therefore, the reading is not mere reading.
It is not mere repetition of words; but every term em-
ployed in the description, we will say, of a horse, or of
an elephant, will call up the image of the things he had
seen in the rabbit, and ne is able to form a distinct con-
ception of that which he has not seen, as a modification
of that which he has seen." (Huxley.)

So far as I have examined the course in elementary bi-
ology as given here in our public schools, it seems to me
to be a worse than useless one, inasmuch as it, by the use
of a text-book alone, puts into the heads of the juvenile
scholars some very erroneous ideas upon but one branch
of biology, that is, physiology. The sole aim would seem
to be to impress upon the minds of the pupils that the
principal value of the study of physiology is to warn them
against the evil results of the use of tobacco and alcoholic
stimulants. There is no reason to believe to the contrary
but what such misguided, fanatical reformers would also
introduce into the public schools some elementary text-
book in anatomy, having as its chief aim to paiat some
lurid picture of the violence done certain structures in
the matter of hanging and the pain attached to that
operation, in order to warn them against the penalties
that might follow willful murder.

Such pernicious instruction as this should be super-
seded at as early a day as possible by a thorough, sound
and practical course in elementary biology, adapted to
school children, to the ages from eight to fifteen; and it is
truly remarkable the interest children exhibit in such
matters when interestingly and rationally taught them.
Between the ages just mentioned there is no reason why
they should not gain some idea of the distribution of the
animals and plants of their own country, at least, taken
in connection with their elementary lessons in physical
geography. By the use of a good text-book, by colored
diagrams, by models and certain material that can be
obtained at any butcher's stall, they can easily be taught
the structure and physiology of the principal organs, tis-
sues and parts of the human body; and, finally, there
may with great advantage be employed elementary in-
struction in botany by dissections upon specimens of
properly selected plants. Farther than this it is not de-

ON BIOLOGY. 77

sirable to go. After fifteen years of age our youth can
readily grasp the advantages that are sure to flow from
a laboratory course, as I explained it a few moments ago.
Under a good instructor they can be easily taught in a
few lessons all the essentials of dissecting, and the use
of a school microscope and the other necessary instru-
ments to commence their work; and it is truly a pleasure
to find how often we meet with children at this age who
thoroughly enjoy and appreciate such a course of train-
ing.

Of course it will not be necessary here to say anything
in reference to the value of the study of biology to the
students of the subject per se; or in other words to
those of either sex who have it in mind to follow the
science as a calling in life. To them it will be their
career, their profession, and that simply demands a
thorough academic course, or one in a university, and,
later, or partly taken in connection therewith, a general
course in biology taught upon the most modern and im-
proved plan. Subsequently the energies of the student
will be bent along the lines of the special department of
the science which he is best fitted in all ways to pursue.
In these days, so broad is the field, that no one ever
dreams of doing more than devoting his attention to some
very limited part of biology, and indeed, of necessity all
of our best biologists are specialists. So narrow are some
of the paths, that men are content to confine themselves
to even the study of restricted groups of some one class
of the main divisions. For instance, the years of the life
of some biologist may have been entirely devoted to avian
oology; another solely to the coleoptera among insects; or
in another case to the physiology of plants, and so on.

Speaking for our own country alone, it is very gratify-
ing to Dote the constantly increasing value placed by the
medical profession at large upon biological knowledge;
and how the best medical schools in the land insist upon a
thorough course in biology as a most important part of their
curriculum. And there is every reason to see why this
should be so, for it is impossible to comprehend fully the
structure of the human body without a knowledge of the
morphology of other animals, any more than we can gain
the full meaning of human physiology without similar re-
searches into the physiology of all other organized types
of the other divisions of the animal kingdom. The mor-
phology, physiology and nature of plants are also quite
essential to the trained practitioner of physic; as is
psychology, and as complete a knowledge as possible of

78 LECTURES

the diseases, the origin and history of all morbid growths,
and the repair of injuries among all kinds of animals
whatsoever. Human reproduction and development is
another subject that would be doomed to wear a very
one-sided aspect unless the study was rendered clear
through the aid of comparisons carried into the other
groups of the vertebrata. Many of the mvertebrata and
their several modes of development have also their value,
especially certain parasitical forms and the like. Finally,
the entire study of all those microscopical species
grouped under the various genera of bacteria and their
allies, forms a very important part of a medical course,
and in reality falls within the science of biology.

In closing, we may truthfully say, then, that as im-
portant as a sound knowledge of his science is to the pro-
fessional biologist; as absolutely indispensable as is a
practical comprehension of the subject to the properly
educated medical man; it is none the less so as forming
a part of the training and education of any person, what-
soever, in the present day and generation, or of him who
makes any pretension to having received in his schooling
that kind of instruction which fits him for the real battle
of life and a clear understanding of a great many of the
problems that he will be called upon to face in this
Nineteenth-Century-day life of ours.

IV.
Its Growth and Future Influence.

It would hardly seem at all within the range of prob-
ability that at any time in the future there will ever be
added another to the main divisions of biology, as I have
already given them to you; or, in other words, the scope
of human knowledge of this kind is now so wide in so far
as the consideration of living matter on the globe is con-
cerned that the division of the science into morphology,
distribution, physiology, and aetiology will stand for all
time as capable of receiving, as a natural classificatory
scheme, anything that her students of the future will re-
veal, or are likely to bring to light. No doubt, as the
science becomes more specialized, more or fewer sub-
divisions will of necessity be differentiated and recog-
nized within the departments in chief, and it will be
along these subdivisional lines that the growth of biology
will take place, and its extension be appreciated. Even
at this very hour, the scalpel and the microscope are
ever busy in the hands of science, investigating the
structure of every kind of existing animal and all
varieties of plants in many parts of the world. These re
searches will go steadily on and that, too, in greater and
greater number, in an ever widening field, and with an
ever increasing interest and ardor.

As we are all aware, morphology constitutes one of the
most important divisions of biology, and it is plain that
there can be but one limit to its work, and that is when
we are in possession of a full and correct account of the
struture of every species of animal or organism now ex-
isting in the world's fauna, as well as an equally full
knowledge of the structure of the entire vegetable world
from the very lowest forms of plant life to the most high
and complex ones. Not only that, but such a far-reach-
ing knowledge should be made comparative in every
sense of the word, and include a complete cjmprehension
of every kind of structural anomaly. Moreover, those

\J

80 LECTURES

investigations will be so extended as to include, apart
from the question of distribution, exhaustive accounts of
the comparative morphology of all the fossil remains of
animals and plants that the explorations of the palaeon-
tologist of the future will have been so fortunate as to
have discovered. At the present rate of progress, which
in its way is quite marvelous, this will, nevertheless, en-
tail the labors of the hands and minds of biologists for
generations and ages to come. For, in these days, you
must understand, we can hardly be said to have mastered
more than an average comparative knowledge of the lead-
ing types of the world's flora and fauna. Much that we
pretend to know nowadays is gotten at by the reliance
we place in the general uniformity of plan and structure
throughout all Nature, animated and otherwise. This,
for the present, carries us very safely for a long ways, yet
every scientist fully appreciates the fact, that our knowl-
edge can only be real when the yet unexamined structures
have all been exhaustively investigated. In connection
with this, too, it must be remembered that a great many
plants still exist in as yet unexplored parts of the world
which have not, for that reason, come into the hands of
science at all.

What I have just said of morphology applies with equal
truth to physiology, and what is now much of an a priori
nature in our knowledge in this science will become in
the iar distant future real and actual through exhaust-
ive observations upon the functions of every possible
tissue and organ throughout the entire range of animal
and plant life as now existing in the world.
It is believed that such a full and comparative
knowledge of function will, during ages to come, grow
and develop pari passu with the growth of our knowledge
of structure, and the two continually flash light adown
each other's paths of advancement.

There is no structure throughout all animated Nature
that has received anything like the amount of anatomical
examination and research as has the body of man. For
centuries it has been the subject, the species above all
others, that has engaged the close attention of the
morphologist, physician and student. Both sexes and
the young of all stages have come in equally for their
share of it; while man's development has been passed
thousands of times in review by investigators stamped
with every shade of ability. Notwithstanding all this there
still remains not a little, both in the anatomy and physi-
ology of man, which is still within the grasp of the un-

ON BIOLOGY. 81

known. Several of the structures and organs of our
bodies are still enigmas to us in so far as we have been
enabled to appreciate their morphological significance.
The same strictures apply to the functions or to the
physiology of those organs. Much in the developmental
and homological history of man's skeleton is still obscure,
and especially is this true of the skull. Even in ap-
parently so simple a system as the muscular, or in the
case of the ligaments, we still are presented with prob-
lems that up to the present time have remained unsolved.
Still greater difficulties have been met in the case of some
of the structures of the brain and general nervous sys-
tem; in the suprarenal capsules, the thyroid and thymus
glands; the spleen; special structures of the eye, ear and
tongue; and, indeed, the list when taken as a whole, is,
as I have just said, not a short one.

Now if this be the case with man, it is not difficult to
imagine how vast must yet be the store of facts still un-
revealed in the entire range of the morphology of all other
animals and plants apart from him. As I have stated
several times we are in possession of the main fundamen-
tal plan of structure that characterizes animals in Nature
to be sure, yet how ignorant we still are of the well-nigh
limitless array of the details of structure. And it is the
discovery of the presence and meaning of these special
structural details in certain forms which will explain not
only the morphological significance of the obscure points
in man's anatomy, but the corresponding ones in all those
other animals wherein the new structure is found to
exist.

Permit me to present you with one or two examples
exhibiting the manner in which the discovery of new
structures in the lower animals not only throws light
upon the corresponding structures in allied forms, but
also often upon the most obscure points in the anatomy
of man. Now there is a small, glandular structure at
the base of the brain in all men, and in all mammals, so
far as I can recollect, which bears the name of the pineal
gland. Until within a very recent time the uses of this
structure were entirely unknown, and not a work upon
either human anatomy or physiology threw any light
upon the subject. Descartes supposed it to be the seat
of the soul! But the nineteenth century biologist knows
better than that, at least; for, thanks to the researches of
Baldwin Spencer, of England, made in 1886, we have, I
think, a better solution of the case. Mr. Spencer, in
making dissections upon that unique form of lizard from

82

LECTURES

New Zealand, known to the zoologist as Hatteria, discov-
ered that it possessed on the vertex of its skull, in the
mid-parietal region, a small perforation or foramen, and
in the brain beneath it, in the median plane, the more
than evident rudiments of an eye — a third, mid-brain
eye. This structure was connected with the brain below
by its nervous stalk, the proximal extremity of which, or
its root, corresponding to the origin of the glandular
structure just spoken of as the pineal gland, which occurs
in so many other animals. Morphologists immediately
examined a great variety of other lizards in various parts
of the world, and many were found to possess it in differ-
ent states of perfectness. Tracing it through the animal
series, it soon became evident that in its nearly com-
pletelv rudimentary condition in man and the higher
mammalia it is now but represented in them by the
pineal gland, or the basal, vestigal end of the nervous
root-stalk.

Another very interesting example of this sort is the
discovery, a few years ago, by my talented friend, Dr. J.
Bland Button, the British anatomist, of the morphologi-
cal import of the round ligament of the hipjoint. This
structure has long been an anatomical puzzle, and is
technically known to aratomists as the ligamentum teres.
In man it is a round ligamentous cord passing from a
shallow pit on the head of the thighbone to the base of
the articulaiory socket for that bone situated at the
side of the pelvis. All sorts of opinions have been held
concerning its nature, but the researches of Dr. Sution
have, it would appear, settled the question; and he has
quite conclusively shown that the ligamentum teres must,
originally have formed a part of the pectineus muscle,
one of the muscles of the upper part of the thigh and
hip. The ligament is very generally found in the mam-
malia, though that class offers a number of remarkable
exceptions. So far as at present known but one bird lacks
it, and that is the cassowary (Casuarius appendiculata),
while in reptiles it has thus far been found to be univer-
sally present, being represented by a ligamentous band.

"It is in the horse that we first get the glimpse of the
true nature of the ligament, for in this animal it consists
of two parts, one hidden within the joint termed the coty-
loid portion, the other passes out of the cavity to join the
linea alba at its jumction with the pubes, hence it is
termed the pubio-femoral portion. From this band the
pectineus takes origin. * '

"In the ostrich the ligamentum teres has a true tendinous

ON BIOLOGY. 83

structure. It is dense and strong, contains a large quan-
tity of yellow elastic tissue arranged iufasciculi, as in the
tendon of a muscle." (Sutton.)

Now the ambiens is another remarkable muscle of the
thigh in birds which has very much excited the interest
of morphologists, and in the adult ostrich it is seen to be
connected by fibrous tissue whh our ligamentum teres. In
the chick of th-; ostrich this fibrous tissue is seen to be a
muscular slip, and Sutton believes, on the best of evi-
dence, that that muscular slip and the ambiens repre-
sent the mammalian pectineus muscle. He is then en-
abled to trace its varying relations and conditions from
the lizard Sphenodon to man, proving most conclusively
its true nature as I have just given it. The account, or
rather chapter, is concluded by his saying:

"There is no ligament in the body which can boast
such an extensive literature, or has exercised more the
ingenuity of physiologists and surgeons than the one we
have been considering." * * * *

"Teleologists like Paley have been enraptured with
this structure, and anatomists have ascribed to it won-
derful mechanical resistance and uses. Alas! in this, as
in so many like cases, morphology demands for it a low
level, and determines it to be a vestigial and practically
useless ligament. In this sense teleology Is as poetry, but
morphology as plain history."

These two very excellent illustrative examples will
serve to show the direction of the lines along which mor-
phology of the future must of necessity progress; and the
advance of the science of physiology will be quite in keep-
ing with it. And, it may be said, inasmuch as the first
stands for all those phenomena of living organisms which
relate to form, and ihe latter for all those which relate to
action, that however independently these two lines of in-
quiry may be progressing now, the day must assuredly
arrive when biologists will appreciate that, perhaps,
after all, but one outcome is common to the two, and it
is indicated by the same molecular processes. Foster
has recently said:

"The problems of physiology may in a broad sense be
spoken of as threefold. (1) On the one hand, we have to
search the laws according to which the complex, un-
stable food is transmuted into the still more complex and
still more unstable living flesh, and the laws according
to which this living substance breaks down into simple,
stable waste products, void or nearly void of energy. (2)
On the other hand, we have to determine the laws ac-

84 LECTURES

cording to which the vibrations of the nervous substance
originate from extrinsic and intrinsic causes, the laws ac-
cording to which these vibrations pass to and fro in the
body, acting and reacting upon each other, and the laws
according to which they finally break up and are lost,
either in those larger swings of muscular contraction
whereby the movements of the body are effected, or in
some other way. (3) And, lastly, we have to attack the
abstruser problems of how these neural vibrations, often
mysteriously attended with changes of consciousness, as
well as the less subtle vibrations of the contracting
muscles, are wrought out of the explosive chemical de-
compositions of the nervous and muscular substances;
that is, of how energy of chemical action is transmuted
into and serves as the supply of that vital energy which
appears as movement, feeling, and thought.''

These being the lines along which physiology must
progress, my inclinations strongly prompt me to next
point out to you what will probably 'be some of the ad-
vances made in the future, in "physiological psychology,"
psychology pure acd simple, and in psychics; for I am
especially interested in such fields, and my connections
with the British Society for Psychical Research have,
through the admirable "Proceedings" they publish, given
me unusual opportunity to keep pace with the science;
but neither our space nor our time will admit of much in
this direction. The society I have just mentioned has,
enrolled among its long list of corresponding, active, and
associate members, many distinguished men and women
of many nationalities, and all are heartily interested in
the progress of every department of psychology. We
need no better proof, as a guarantee of its sincerity of
purpose and aims, than to see the names of Lord Tenny-
son, the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, the bishops of
Carlisle and of Ripon, John Ruskin, and a host of other
weighty names — as we do — upon its list of -members.
Among the best workers of the society there is a strong
tendency to treat psychology by precisely similar methods
whereby we deal with any of the natural sciences. As-
suming such things as thoughts and feelings to exist it is
contended that they present themselves as vehicles of
knowledge, and it becomes one of the most important
tasks of the psychologist to ascertain by strictly scientific
experimental methods the correlations existing between
those various sorts of thoughts and feelings on the one
hand, with the definite conditions of the brain on the
ther. Bey ond such premises psychology passes into

ON BIOLOGY. 85

metaphysics, but the science has centuries of work be-
fore it in the fields I have just indicated. An enormous
amount of evidence of all kinds, and often of the most
peculiar kinds, has been submitted to the society for its
consideration, and the great mass of this has been
critically dealt with after the most careful scientific
methods. Mr. Frederic W. H. Myers, one of the two
honorary secretaries of the society, has recently said, in
referring to the work accomplished by its efforts:

"There has been what we regard as adequate evidence
of telepathy — a power of direct communication from
mind to mind— which is difficult to reconcile with the
ordinary materialistic synthesis. There has been evi-
dence also — less in quantity, but to me convincing — of
clairvoyance, of the supernormal acquisition of knowl-
edge as to present, past, and perhaps even future things.
And there has been evidence which points prima facie to
the agency of departed personalities, although this evi-
dence has also been interpreted in other ways.''

These convictions of Mr. Myers are not held by all
the members, though for one other I can say the evi-
dence that has been submitted and examined has quite
satisfied me of the truth of telepathy. Further than
that, 1 have nothing to say at present, though I would
add it must be fully evident to anyone that the results
aimed at, were they attained and proven, are of greater
importance to all mankind than the sum total of all else
that can ever be accomplished by every other science
known to us united.

Finally, the society has added very materially to our
knowledge of hj'pnotism, hallucinations, dreams, pre-
monitions, and a number of other allied subjects, and
progress in several of these directions is very satisfactory
and material.

From the consideration of such supreme matters as1 are
offered us by the science of physchology, we pass again
to take to note of the growth and advancement of another
department of biology which has a world-wide interest
for all lovers of Nature, and all that is lovable in Nature.
I refer to that science which to both the popular mind
and to the naturalist has for ages been known as zoology —
the natural history of animals, pure and simple. Taken
as a whole the world over, progress in these fields of re-
cent years has been, it seems to me, rather in the direc-
tion of amassing material for museums and private
collections than of making carefully recorded and ex-
haustive accounts of the life-histories of animals. As

86 LECTURES

highly important as it is in its way, the mere accumula-
tion of specimens of either animals or plants, and bestow-
ing upon them appropriate technical names, and defining
the position of such species in the natural system is by
no means the end and all there is to zoological science.
No one, I think, can better appreciate the great value of
the kind of material of which I speak, than I do. Take
mammals, for example, there can be no question about
the desirability of collecting both alcoholic specimens,
skins, and skeletons of all the mammals possible, in an
country; of naming them, describing them and classify-
ing them, as far as the material will admit. Yet, some-
times, it is very discouraging to go into our large
museums, and, upon examining those specimens, to find
really how very little we know of the life-histories, the
intimate habits, or even the geographical distribution of
the specimens that have been so carefully collected. In
this country we are, even to-day, wonderfully ignorant of
many of the habits of some of our commonest and most
abundant mammals, and, especially, the smaller varieties
of them, though what I have said is equally applicable to
many of the larger forms.

In the. majority of instances in the case of the latter
this is very unfortunate, as all over the world many of
them are rapidly becoming extinct, and some, indeed,
have become quite so, even within very recent times.
Not only is it very essential that we should possess as
complete accounts as possible of the entire morphology
of all the forms to which I have reference, but upon all
occasions, wherever and whenever opportunity offers,
both in Nature and in the zoological gardens, we should
make most careful observations upon every trait any par-
ticular animal exhibits. And, above* all else, such studies
should be made comparative and the comparisons based
upon true scientific methods. It is desirable to know as
accurately as possible the exact geographical range and
distribution of each species; its relative abundance; its
rate of increase or decrease, as the case may present; its
enemies and the animals which it itself in turn attacks;
the diseases and parasites to which it is subject; its food
at various seasons of the years, and its choice of one food
when deprived by any cause of another; its habits as
affected by. the seasons, by the elements and by vicissi-
tudes of climate; its peculiar habits; its habits in confine-
ment and its diurnal and nocturnal habits; its changes of.
pelage; all that refers to its reproduction, development,
relations of the sexes and their behavior when associated;

ON BIOLOGY. 87

the way in which they rear their young:, and everything
that pertains thereto; and, finally, statistics as to what
economical value it may possess, and other matters. So it
will be seen that, in the case of any species of mammal, to
give a complete account of its life-history in a thoroughly
scientific manner is far from being alight task. But this
is by no means all I would exact of the zoologist, for such
hisiorical accounts, to be of the greatest value, should be
made comparative in every sense of the word. Habits
and all the other matters I have just enumerated, having
been collected for the most lowly organized types of the
mammals of any particular family or group, should be
properly compared with the corresponding traits as found
in the animals next above them in the same group. Then
the digested data, the outcome of such studies when
systemized, should, in turn, be compared with the simi-
lar and comparable knowledge derived from like observa-
tions upon the next most nearly affined group or family
of mammals, and that, too, the next higher in the scale
of organization.

Thus it should be carried on and upward through the
system, from the most lowly organized types to include
the various genera of new and old world apes and their
near kin. As we ascend step by step we should be par-
ticularly careful to note any new habit that may arise,
especially those habits which appear to* indicate any ad-
vance in the mental faculties, or kindred attributes.
With such knowledge at our command, and systemat-
ically formulated for proper use we are in a position to
undertake identically the same kind of studies in the
case of all the various types and races of men, or the
world's anthropofaunae, beginning with the very lowest
types of man known to us and ascending the scale to
those most highly organized in all particulars — physic-
ally, mentally, morally and intellectually. It is very
desirable that this should be done, done well, and made
thoroughly comparative. A great deal has been done
already along such lines, but in my estimation very little
in comparison with what is actually required. By such
studies much light may be thrown upon the question of
the origin of the mental powers in man; the tracing of
the origin of language, and of the special development of
the intellect; of the origin and development of the moral
qualities; of certain desires and passions; of the relations
of the sexes; origin of marriage; and, finally, a great deal
else which may be said to be the natural outcome of the
development of all that is included in the social instincts

88 LECTURES

of man. Carrying these studies a little further along
and we lay down the true principles which constitute
the foundations of the science of sociology, which, in
truth, is nothing more than the science of social phe-
nomena as exhibited in human society; and its growth
clearly shows it to belong to the group of biological
sciences.

As already intimated, we may, in the future, and that,
too, for many ages to come, look forward to an ever-
increasing knowledge of the science of distribution — the
distribution of animals and plants both in space and in
time. Whatever may be the amount, however, of this
knowledge yet to be possessed, we can hardly look for
anything more than an amplification, by an accumula-
tion of an enormous array of additional facts, of the
scheme and of the laws of distribution as they are now
known to us. Progress in this science, in the future will
consist in a refinement in detail of what we already know
about the distribution of the world's existing florae and
faunas. Many new species of organisms will come to
light, but as they do we will sooner or later come to be
familiar with their exact geographical ranges. Among
the minuter forms of life this will, of course,
requires much research, extending over many
ages of time; and in the case of the vast majority of the
smaller types of marine life it will require a considerably
longer time before we will possess any exact knowledge
on the subject, more especially in the case of the deep-
sea forms. Indeed we may add here that there probably
yet remain unknown to us myraidsof interesting animals,
of all kinds, in the ocean's depths, but even these the
labors of our marine zoologists are slowly bringing to
light. As to the distribution of plants and animals in
time, pretty much the same kind of progress is indicated.
Our palseozoologists and our paleeobotanists in the
future, no doubt will have their explorations rewarded
by the discovery, ever and anon, of many specimens of
fossil plants and animals long since extinct. These dis-
coveries will in their turn react by shedding an ever-in-
creasing light upon the question of the distribution of
animal and plant life as we now find it in the world, and
thus solve many problems which are, as yet, quite ob-
scure. Notwithstanding this view of the case, we may
look at any time for interesting developments all along
the line; such as, for example, the discovery of vertebrate
life in the Cambriam, a most important discovery re-

ON BIOLOGY.

cently made by Mr. Walcott of the United States Geo-
graphical Survey.

Knowing as \ve do the fundamental morphological plan
of structure as it is variously exemplified among the
several orders of plants; the main groups of the inverte-
brata; and among the vertebrates; we can look for nothing
more among all the paheonlotoglcal material which will
assuredly be brought to light in the future than interest-
ing modifications of those several plans of structure.
Such discoveries in some instances, undoubtedly, will
bring before us some very remarkable facts, but they
will ever be in harmony with the facts already known to
us. The most we can look for in such directions is a
progressive refinement in our knowledge of the affinities
of existing organisms, and the affinities of i he various
species, genera, and families long since extinct. Light
will constantly also be thrown upon the morphological
enigmas as they now stand to us among many of the ex-
isting species of animals and plants.

The fact I wish to distinctly impress however, is that
our knowledge of morphology, in general, is at present of
such a nature that it absolutely admits of our prophesy-
ing, from the known data of the anatomical character of
animals or plarts in our possession, what kind of forms
we will probably meet with among the yet undiscovered
fossil tjpes in the future. Such prophecies have in
several instances actually been made, and it is one of the
grandest triumphs of which humanity has to boast, that
in a number of cases those prophecies have actually been
fulfilled. For instance, the fundamental plan of the
hand and foot among all the higher types of vertebrates
is pentadactyle, or five digits upon either member. Now
when we discovered the fossil Orohippus in the line of the
ancestors of our modern horse, it was seen that it had but
four complete toes on the front limb and three toes upon
the hind limb. The prophesy was made, based upon our
knowledge of the fundamental plan of the foot and hand
in the group to which it belonged, that if we were ever so
fortuna'e as to meet with the ancestral form from which
Orohippus was derived it would approach still nearer the
pentadactyle type. A number of years afterward the
prophecy was most beautifully fulfilled by the discovery
of the fossil Eohippus, in the ancestral line of the horses,
which supplied the required conditions.

Permit me to present you with one more instance of
this kind — not the first one that has happened, nor, mark
my word, will it be the last one of a similar nature: The

90 LECTURES

lesson it teaches those who may be more or less unin-
formed in such matters — and everyone here present being
on the right side of the line, may smile at the class to
whom I refer — is invaluable. It will well exemplify the
certitude of the predictions of biologists in such premises,
equipped as they are with their present-day acquired
morphological facts, as it likewise proclaims that it is
not even necessary to have in our possession the entire
skeleton of the fossil remains of the animal discovered to
safely predict as to its position in the natural system. A
split slab of stone, of considerable geological age, from
the quarries of Montmartre is presented to the distin-
guished French savant Cuvier. Its two halves contain
the greater part of the skeleton of a small mammal, but
only a few of the teeth of the lower jaw happen to be
exposed, and these Cuvier carefully examines. The
exposed material you will at once appreciate is but frag-
mentary, yet that sagacious French biologist made no
hesitation in pronouncing the animal an opossum, guided
as he was by the evidence in sight, and duly assigned the
fossil to that genus. Opossums are unlike most of the
mammalia, inasmuch as they possess two small bones,
articulated mesially to the fore part of the pelvis, which
have been called the "marsupial bones," but the function
of which has not been definitely determined. Now, al-
though the animal Cuvier had in hand had been dead and
fossilized and encased in rock for untold ages, he prophe-
sied that when they came to clear away the matrix which
contained it there would be discovered, in front of the
pelvis, the two usual bones that characterize that part of
the skeleton in the opossums, and this prediction he made
from an examination, you will remember, of only a few
of the teeth. Other naturalists were invited to witness
tne disinterment, so confident was Cuvier of his predic-
tion, and, be it said to the credit of biological science, he
was most eminently correct in his ideas, for the marsu-
pial bones of the fossil were duly exposed in situ. Now
the application of such a philosophy as this not only
holds true of mammals, but it holds true of all animals
and plants whatsoever, that have ever existed since the
beginning of the world. Not only this, but with the in-
crease and the better knowledge of such material, our
prophecies can be made with an ever increasing certainty
of their correctness, so that, in time, without ever having
seen certain fossil animals at all, it will become possible
for the skilled palaeontologist to very closely designate
the various kinds that must have of necessity existed;

ON BIOLOGY. 91

that is, must have existed in order to complete the gene-
alogical tree of all animal and plant forms, applying, as
I do, the same statement to botany. Or, as Huxley
puts it:

"The same method of reasoning which enables us,
when furnished with a fragment of an extinct animal, to
prophesy the character whicn the whole organism ex-
hibited, will, sooner or later, enable us, when we know a
few of the later terms of a genealoaical series, to predict
the nature of the earlier terms." Professor Cope, our dis-
tinguished American palaeontologist, upon one instance,
at least, has already verified what I have just quoted from
Huxley; for long before iis discovery he prophesied what
the main osteological characters of one of the ancestors of
a certain group of fossil animals essentially must have
been, and that such and such an animal certainly must
have existed. Years later not only was the fossil found,
but it was characterized by possessing a skeleton such as
Cope predicted it would possess, and that skeleton is now
in the hands of science

Taken collectively the progress of that department of
biology which we now have under consideration will be
represented then, in the future, by the progress made
along the lines developed by the palaeontologist; the
student of the distribution of animal and plant forms in
time; and lastly, the zoogeographer, or him who deals
with the science of the distribution of all forms of life in
space.

The combined results of the laborers in these fields will
be an elaboration of our knowledge of the true affinities
existing among all animals, both in time and in space, as
well as the true affinities existing among all plants, from
their beginning in time up to include all modern florae.
The trunks, the main branches, the principal limbs, and
even many of the twiglets of these two mighty genealogi-
cal trees are now well known to us, so well known, indeed,
that it is hard for me to conceive of any discoveries that
may be made by the palaeontologist in the ages to come
that could excite in the philosophic biologist anything
that could at all be likened to puzzled wonderment. The
unfinished offshoots of the genealogical tree of descent
await the engraftment upon them of the yet undiscov-
ered fossil forms concealed within the solid crust of the
earth; and however extravagant the modifications of many
of those forms may prove to be, we are well assured that
they can only be modifications in any case of the at-
present-known types of structure now existing in nature;

92 LECTURES

and so, however intense the interest they may excite, they
can create no such thing as revolutionary surprises. They
will have, however, beyond all doubt, the effect of con-
stantly making clearer and clearer our conceptions of the
material scheme of the universe; the operations of natural
laws; and the interrelationship and interdependence of all
living things since life first appeared upon earth. It is
this kind of progress which is taking place at the present
hour, and will continue just so long as the mind of man
pleases to carry his inquiries and his researches into such
fields; and there appears to be no evidence at this time of
his relinquishing them.

As has already been pointed out, the kno'vn phenomena
of biology comprised by the several sciences of mor-
phology, physiology and distribution are constantly lead-
ing us up, face to face, to that question of all questions,
the origination of living matter upon this planet, and the
causes which have led to it. Such knowledge as we
possess and in any way sheds any light upon this~subject,
is referred to— as I have already said — in that fourth
department of biology designated, as you know, as
aetiology; and it, in its present stage of development,
must be considered quite in its infancy. Especially must
this be regarded as the case, inasmuch as many of our
most competent living biologists are of the opinion, an
opinion shared by myself, that we are as yet in absolute
ignorance of the causes which have led to the origination
of living matter. From the very nature of the case
palaeontology will never be enabled to furnish us with
the direct evidence of the character of the primoidal
forms of living organisms, much less the proof as to how
those forms were first endowed with life. Still, evidence
of another kind, and most conclusive evidence, leaves no
doubt in our minds as to what the character of those
primoidal forms must have been, though that evidence
leaves us still utterly in the dark as to how life arose in
them. So far as our present-day knowledge carries us,
everything seems to point to the conclusion entertained
by most scientists that all planets and stars, alike, now
composing the universe, are either at present In a gaseous
state or have at some time or other passed through such
a stage. Further, we have every reason to believe that
this planet has likewise passed through a similar stage,
and that being the case its condition at that time must
have been Such that no living matter could have possibly
existed upon it. From this we are led to infer that liv-
ing matter must originally have arisen from non-living

ON BIOLOGY. 93

matter, an hypothesis — it may be said in passing — quite
in harmony with the doctrine of evolution. Science, as
yet, is not in possession of any direct evidence which
could be considered demonstrative of the fact that any
such a phenomenon has ever taken place in Nature at
any time within the period of the recorded existence of
life upon the earth. You will remember that I said such
a theory is spoken of as the theory of abiogenesis. and
although we have no trustworthy proof of its actual
occurrence, "it need hardly be pointed out," as Huxley
says, that that "fact does not in the slightest degree
interfere with any conclusion that may be arrived at
deductively from other considerations that, at some other
time or other, abiogenesis must have taken place." From
these premises we are compelled to believe that the
progress for aetiology in the future must be the accumu-
lation of evidence in support of those other considera-
tions to which allusion has just been made, and that
such evidence will in time be forthcoming I make no
manner of doubt, any more than I entertain any doubt in
my mind that the deduction which can be made from it
will be so weighty that it will place the question of
abiogenesis upon as secure a foundation, in so far as its
occurrence is concerned, as that of any other inductive
hypothesis which has been accepted as good as proven by
all thinking people who ever pay any attention to such
matters.

My remarks upon this subject would not be complete
did I not at least make brief allusion to the provisional
hypothesis, advanced by Darwin, which he termed "pan-
genesis," whereby he attempted to explain the phenom-
ena of reproduction in organisms. In one of his works he
says:

'•I venture to advance the hypothesis of pangenesis,
which implies that every separate part of the whole or-
ganization reproduces itself. So that ovules, spermato-
zoa, and pollen-grains— the fertilized egg or seed, as well
as buds— include and consist of a multitude of germs
thrown off from each separate part or unit,"

For some reason or other this hypothesis does not seem
to have excited any lasting interest, either in the lay or
scientific mind, although we cannot claim that as any
valid proof militating against its truth, and that is a
matter which time and amplification of our knowledge
in the premises alone can settle.

Even the biogenetic view of the origination of life has
its enigmas for us to solve, and so far as the initial ques-

94 LECTURES

tion of impregnation, for example, is concerned even the
lucid description given us of it in the common fowl by
the late distinguished British embryologist, Mr. Balfour,
may not satisfy the minds of all of us as to exactly how
life actually begins. Mr. Balfour says that impregnation,
in the case of the chicken, "occurs in the upper portion
of the oviduct; the spermatozoa being found actively
moving in the fluid which is there contained." * * *

"We have as yet, as far as the fowl is concerned, no
direct observations concerning the changes preceding and
following upon impregnation; nor, indeed, concerning the
actual nature of the act of impregnation." *

"In other types, however, these processes have been
followed with considerable care, and the result has been
to show that prior to impregnation a division of the
ovum takes place into two very unequal parts. The
smaller of these parts is known as the polar body, and
plays no further part in the development. In the course
of the division of the ovum into these two parts the ger-
minal vesicle also divides, and one part of it enters the
polar body while a portion remains in the larger segment,
which continues to be called the ovum, and is there
known as the female pronucleus. Impregnation has been
found to consist essentially in the entrance of a single
spermatozoon into the ovum, followed by the fusion of
the two. The spermatozoon itself is to be regarded as a
cell, the head of which corresponds to the nucleus.
When the spermatozoon enters the ovum the substance
forming its tail becomes mingled with the protoplasm of
the latter, but the head enlarges and constitutes a dis-
tinct body called the male pronucleus, which travels
toward and finally fuses with the female pronucleus to
constitute the nucleus of the impregnated ovum."

From this point it has not proved especially difficult
for the trained embryologist to trace the development of
the chick of the fowl to that stage of development when
it quits the eggshell that incases it during the early
stages of its existence. And it may be said that the
statements we have quoted from Mr. Balfour may carry
with them considerable comfort to him who entertains
the biogenetic view of the origination of living matter,
still it seems to us that even a little more light in this
direction would not come altogether amiss. One, for in-
stance, almost fesls Inclined to ask, what is the nature of
the life as exhibited on the part of the spermatozoon? I
have examined the live spermatozoon of the highest types
of vertebrates known to us, and am familiar with the

ON BIOLOGY. 95

physiology of the Protamaba and the tadpole, and am
tree to confess tbat i would be glad to have 11 made c ear
to me that ihe living principle, the verv essence of life is
identical in all three of these organisms. Still more
would I be slad to know the precise difference 'twixt a
live amceba and a dead one; 'twixt a live bp-rmatozoon
and a dead one; and, finalb , is the unimpregoated ovum
of the female endowed with Jife, or is life simply brought
to it by the male spermatozoon? Surely ihe >oung
science of aetiology has many questions to answer for us.
Finally, we have the words of Huxley upon this sub-
ject, in his able address on ''spontaneous generation,"
delivered before the British Association for the Advance-
ment of Science, at the Liverpool meeting, in September,
1870; and although that is nearly a quarter of a century
ago, it yet remains a very clear exriosition of the case,
and he then said: "Though I cannot express this convic-
tion of mine too strongly, I muse carefully guard myself
against the supposition that I intend to suggest that no
such thing as abiogenesis ever has taken place in the past
or ever will take place in the future. With organic
chemistry, molecular physics and physiology }et
in their infancy and every day making prodig-
ious strides — I think it would be the height of presump-
tion for any man to say that the conditions under which
matter assumes the properties we call 'vital' may not
some dav, be artificially brought together. All I feel
justified in affirming is, that I see no reason for believing
that the feat has been performed yet. * * * And,
looking back through the prodigious vista of the
past, I find no record of the commencement of life, and,
therefore, I am devoid of any means of forming a definite
conclusion as to the conditions of its appearance. Belief,
in the scientific sense of the word, is a serious matter and
needs strong foundations. To say, therefore, in the ad-
mitted absence of evidence, that I have any belief as to
the mode in which the existing forms of life have origi-
nated would be using words in a wrong sense. But expec-
tation is permissible where belief is not; and, if it were
given me 10 look beyond the abyss of geologically recorded
lime to the still more remote period when the earth was
passing through physical and chemical conditions which
it can no more see again than a man can recall his
infancy, I should expect to be a witness of the evolution
of living protoplasm from not living matter. I should
expect to see it appear under forms of great simplicity,
endowed, like existing fungi, with the power of deter-

96 LECTURES

mining the formation of new protoplasm from such mat-
ters as ammonium carbonates, oxalates and tartrates,
alkaline and earthy phosphates, and water, without the
aid of light. That is the expectation to which analogical
reasoning leads me; but I beg you once more to recollect
that I have no right to call my opinion anything but an
act of philosophical faith." * * *

"So much for the history of the progress of Redi's great
doctrine of biogenesis, which appears to me, with the
limitations I have expressed, 10 be victorious along the
whole line at the present day."

As I have said, these convictions of Professor Huxley's
were expressed by him nearly a quarter of a century ago,
and in the interim between the time of their expression
and the present hour the keenest methods of experimen-
tation in such fields have been steadily kept up in many
laboratories, by the most competent observers, and the
result has been that an ever-increasing belief in the idea
that abiogenesis can take place; that is, in certain low
and simple organisms we may have living matter arise
from non-living matter, and it was what took place at
the dawn of life upon earth. This is my belief, my con-
viction; and its complete demonstration when accom-
plished will be far from a matter of surprise to me.
During the last century we have wrested so many of
Nature's secrets from her that I feel that the earnest
truth-seekers In bijlogy will by their persistent efforts in
such directions compel her to surrender this one likewise,
perhaps the most or one of the most important ones she
still withholds from humanity.

Biological advance, in all its departments, for the last
half century, has, as we are all well aware, most power-
fully influenced the entire trend of human thought, and
wherever its modern doctrines have come in contact with
modern society, capable, in whole or in part of logical
reasoning, they hnve had the effects of completely revolu-
tionizing many of its time-honored ideas, and much of its
time-honored philosophy. To those who have'kept pace
with scientific advance during rather more than the
latter half of the time of which I speak, it is unnecessary
to recall the fact that that revolution came upon the world
of thought in no very gentle manner, for the roar of its
trained artillery and the rattle of iis musketry of millions
of facts thoroughly aroused every mind in the entire
army of the world's thinkers. And controversies of the
most seething nature characterized the war that fol-
lowed, and may hardly yet be said to have terminated,

ON BIOLOGY. 97

though where facts constitute the ammunition used the
contest cannot be long prolonged.

Your lecturer claims not to be quite as sanguine as
many another teacher in biology with whom he ha
acquaintance, but he has that faith in the rate at which
human thought is now moving to be fully of the opinion
that we have not very far to look into the future to be
enabled to see the time when the fundamental principles
and common facts of biology shall be taught, and prop-
erly taught, in every school of whatever size or scope, in
the country. It will then be thought quite as essential
for our growing youth to be familiar with the general
features of the anatomy and physiology of their own
bodies as it will be to be able to give the leading
Incidents of the war of 1812; and, perhaps, be considered
equally as practical. Moreover, in that time, when it
arrives, it will be considered quite as derogatory to tbe
name of a liberal education to have our youth ignorant of
the laws of descent as applied to all living organisms; of
the laws of distribution; and the names and general
habits of the fauna of his own land, as it will and now is
to have them ignorant of the main characters of the
earth's atmospheric envelop or the law of gravitation.
To me there is no better indication of an unbalanced,
one-sided education, at the present day, than to find
some young man more or less conversant with what his
physical geography has to teach him about the Arctic
Ocean currents, and, yet, at the same time, laboring
under the impression that the biggest creature that
habitually swims and lives therein— the whale — is "a
great fish;" whereas, any elementary text-book in zoolo-
gy, upon a moment's consultation will set him right, and
demonstrate the fact that a whale is no fish at all, but on
the other hand is just as much of a mammal as a horse
or an elephant, with all the main characteristics of a
mammal, even nursing its young at the breast. Yet
this is but one case, chosen for illustration, from among
hundreds of others.

One of the greatest living expounders of modern
science, in speaking of the educational value of biology
in general and of physiology in particular, has said:

"Biology needs no apologist when she demands a place
— and a prominent place — in any scheme of education
worthy of the name. Leave out the physiological sciences
from your curriculum and you launch the student into
the world undisciplined in that science whose subject-
matter would best develop his powers of observation;

98 LECTURES

ignorant of facts of the deepest importance for his own
and others' welfare; blind to the richest sources of beauty
in God's creation; and unprovided witb. that belief in a
living law and an order manifesting itself in and through
endless change and variety, which might serve to check
and moderate that phase of despair through which, if he
take an earnest interest in social problems, be will as-
suredly sooner or later pass." (Huxley.)

But, it may be asked, are we not awakening, indeed,
have we not already awakened to the realization of the
force and point and truth of all that, is contained in the
cogent passage we have just quoted? Have we not very
good evidence upon all sides, however slowly it may be
advancing or however imperfectly, of just such changes
being introduced into the workings of our educational
machine, into the very texture of all our educational
schemes everywhere? There can be no doubt about it,
and one must have his eyes shut, in these da3rs, with a
very tight squeeze, who fails to see that just such
changes are coming about; that the present is most em-
phatically an age of transition in all such matters, the
like of which has never been seen by the world before,
since her history first began. No one can doubt for a
moment how powerful the influence of such radical
changes in our educational methods will prove in the
future of the race. Yet, it constitutes nothing more than
an evolution of ideas, a growth quite comparable with
the evolvement of many other things the world has seen
and produced. A passage, as it were, from an age more
or less characterized by an intellectual thralldom, to
another and higher one, stamped chiefly by an almost
universal exercise of common sense, by a universal dif-
fusion and absorption of all kinds of knowledge, and a
general desire to arrive at the real truth in all things; to
expose Nature's true inwardness, and demonstrate her
every law; to observe, compare, and verify every new
fact acquired, and apply, as far as possible, the digested
knowledge thus obtained to the practical ends of human
pursuits.

In short, then, taking the science of biology in its en-
tirety, represented by its enormous army of actual work-
ers upon the one hand and its innumerable host of sup-
porters and believers on the other, one may scrutinize its
ranks from the head of the column to the last file closer
in the rear, and it will be seen that they advance under
but a common standard, and that standard has embla-
zoned upon its center field but one motto, and its words

ON BIOLOGY. 99

are: "We seek the truth and the truth only." Such
being the broad field of its operations; such its progress;
and such its aims, it can easily be conceived by all who
care or have the power to raise themselves in their
stirrups and scan the unexplored domain that lies in the
way of this column's advance, or those who may be found
there in that territory to meet it, what its influence must
be in the future, both the most immediate future, and
that future which shall close the career of man upon
earth.

Truth must and ever will powerfully prevail; and when
truth is brought in collision with those human opinions,
those human institutions, those human ideas which can-
not bear the full blaze of her scrutiny, there can be but
one fate for them all — they are completely overcome, and
thereafter, in their disarmed state, can but forever stand
aside, as beacons of human experience, to pass down into
human history as perpetual warnings of the danger to
man's progress, that danger which is ever represented by
erroneous ideas and by those practices uoguided by the
knowledge of truth and the knowledge of fact.

Nations and governments do feel now and must feel
still more in the future the influence of this advance in
natural knowledge, for nations are made up of individ-
uals, and when truth pervades the part it must eventu-
ally pervade the whole. But nations have nothing to
fear from such quarters, and onlv benefit can follow,
benefit which must come in the light of the knowledge of
man's true place in Nature, his relations to the universe
at large, and finally, how his life, his happiness, his
career, and his material progress is completely under the
sway of those natural laws that in common affect both
the earth and every living organism uoon it. Similarly,
all of man's social and educational institutions must be
influenced for the better through the same means in the
future. Art will receive her impress, for much in art is
a reproduction of what we see in Nature, and if it be that
the artist cannot read Nature aright his erroneous ideas
of her will, of a certainty, make their appearance in his
work.

Throughout this course of lectures several opportuni-
ties have been taken to point out what a profound influ-
ence biological progress must exert upon the profession
of medicine in the future, and this must be sufficiently
clear, inasmuch as morphology and physiology lie at the
very base of that science. 'A moment's reflection is alone
necessary to appreciate how the same influence will con-

100 LECTURES

tinue to be extended to its closely allied profession of
medical jurisprudence, for very frequently an exact
knowledge of physiology is demanded of its practitioners
to come to just conclusions. And thus it can be shown
that there is not a single activity in which men engage
that will not, in the future, either by a direct knowledge
of one or another of the biological sciences, or through an
improvement in our methods adopted for mental training
engendered by their introduction into our system of edu-
cation, be more or less beneficially influenced thereby.

We have another great institution with us that of re-
cent years has been powerfully influenced by the growth
of our newly acquired knowledge of natural laws, and
must, of necessity, appreciate that fact still more sensi-
bly in the future. I refer to religion and to Christianity;
but there has been so very much said and written upon
this subject, during the last half century, that it would
seem to be almost impossible to even refer to so vast a
field for comment here with the hope of bringing any
new light to bear. To my mind, time alone is required
for the true and lasting adjustments to be arrived at in
such premises. The broadest thinkers in the church are
not slow in seeing that truth alone controls scientific
progress; every page in human history establishes that
fact, and surely, religion has nothing to fear from any such
quarter. And it must be evident that wise indeed will
be that church that can most rapidly and surely accom-
modate itself, at all times, to ,the intellectual growth of
the world. It can but redound to her
credit, broaden her conceptions, and improve religious
teachings and methods. Scientific criticism is so keen,
so exacting, and so impartial, in these days, that it con-
stitutes the most formidable foe extant to anything that
may arise, even within the very ranks of science, at all
incompatible with what is true; and it is simply out of
the question to have any hypothesis live for a moment,
come from whence it may, unless it be reared upon
ample, veil attested facts and figures. It will meet with
almost instant refutation at the very hands of scientific
men themselves, and if any layman choose to test the
truth of this, and test how exacting science is in these
respects as to the question of matter of fact, he has but
to do and publish some small piece of monographic
work in biology, into which he has allowed to creep er-
rors here and there, to appreciate how promptly the
workers in similar fields will take pleasure in publicly
correcting them for his instruction and guidance in the

ON BIOLOGY. 101

future. Such a person would soon come to appreciate
the fact, a fact that science in all ages has appreciated,
that truth-seeking is a very safe occupation, and truth-
telling exceedingly useful.

A few years ago Doctor White made some excellent re-
marks upon this side of the question, when he said:
"May we not, then, hope that the greatest and best
men in the Church — the men standing at centers of
thought— will insist with power, more and more, that
religion be no longer tied to so injurious a policy as that
which this warfare reveals; that searchers for truth,
whether in theology or natural science, work on as
friends, sure that, no matter how much at variance they
may at times seem to be the truths they reach shall
finally be fused into each other? The dominant religious
conceptions of the world will doubtless be greatly modi-
fied by science in the future, as they have been in the
past; and the part of any wisely religious person, at any
center of influence, is to see that, in his generation, this
readjustment of religion to science be made as quietly
and speedily as possible."

My brief connection with this university, as an invited
lecturer, has been an exceedingly pleasurable one, and
this has been rendered especially so from the fact that it
has convinced me of the great breadth of its views in re-
spect to its relation to modern progress and modern
thought; and still more from the fact that it proposes to
institute methods and operations that will' effectually
carry scientific teaching into her curriculum and the
scheme of her instruction. When a great Catholic Uni-
versity does this she takes a distinct step in advance, and
expresses the courage of her convictions that her faith
surrounds the true kernel of religion; and although the
truths advanced by science may cast strong suspicions upon
many of the long-cherished traditional beliefs, or even
utterly refute them, she fears not those truths for they
can have but the one effect of stripping away all that is
unworthy of her and permitting that kernel, to which I
have just made reference, to shine forth with the greate~
brilliancy and power.

In closing it gives me pleasure to tender my most sin-
cere thanks for the courteous and hearty reception ex-
tended me by the members of this University; and, what
has been even more gratifying to me, the compliment,
which I most keenly appreciate, of the undisturbed and
continuous attention which the Faculty, students and
audience have so kindly bestowed upon my remarks from

102

LECTURES

the beginning of the first lecture to the close of the final
one which I have had the honor to bring before you this
evening.
Takoma Park, D. C.

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