History Of Biology - free ebook by L. C. (Louis Compton) Miall

HISTORY OF BIOLOGY

BY L. C. MIALL, D.Sc., F.R.S., FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS [ISSUED FOR THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, LIMITED] London: WATTS &amp; CO., 17 JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C. 1911...

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The Biology of the Ancients.

Long before the year 1500 there had been a short-lived science of biology, and it is necessary to explain how it arose and how it became quenched. Ancient books and the languages in which they are written teach us that in very remote times men attended to the uses of plants and the habits of animals, gave names to familiar species, and recognised that while human life has much in common with the life of animals, it has something in common with the life of plants. Abundant traces of an interest i

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Extinction of Scientific Inquiry.

The decline and fall of the Roman Empire brought with it the temporary extinction of civilisation in a great part of Western Europe. Science was during some centuries taught, if taught at all, out of little manuals compiled from ancient authors. Geometry and astronomy were supplanted by astrology and magic; medicine was rarely practised except by Jews and the inmates of religious houses. Literature and the fine arts died out almost everywhere. No doubt the practical knowledge of the farmer and g

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Revival of Knowledge.

By the thirteenth century the rate of progress had become rapid. To this age are ascribed the introduction of the mariner's compass, gunpowder, reading glasses, the Arabic numerals, and decimal arithmetic. In the fourteenth century trade with the East revived; Central Asia and even the Far East were visited by Europeans; universities were multiplied; the revival of learning, painting, and sculpture was accomplished in Italy. Engraving on wood or copper and printing from moveable types date from

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Characteristics of the Period.

This is the time of the revival of science; the revival of learning had set in about two centuries earlier. Europe was now repeatedly devastated by religious wars (the revolt of the Netherlands, the wars of the League in France, the Thirty Years' war, the civil war in England). Learning was still mainly classical and scholastic; nearly every writer whom we shall have occasion to name had been educated at a university, and was able to read and write Latin. Two great extensions of knowledge helped

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The Revival of Botany.

Botany was among the first of the sciences to revive. Its comparatively early start was due to close association with the lucrative profession of medicine. Medicine itself was slow to shake off the unscientific tradition of the Middle Ages, and its backwardness favoured, as it happened, the progress of botany. In the sixteenth century the physician was above all things the prescriber of drugs, and since nine-tenths of the drugs were got from plants, botanical knowledge was reckoned as one of his

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The Revival of Zoology.

While the physicians of the Rhineland were describing and figuring their native plants, the study of animals began to revive. Two very different methods of work were tried by the zoologists of the sixteenth century. One set of men, who may be called the Encyclopædic Naturalists, were convinced that books, and especially the books of the ancients, constituted the chief source of information concerning animals and most other things. They extracted whatever they could from Aristotle, Ælian, and Pli

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Early Notions of System.

Simple-minded people, who do not feel the need of precision in matters of natural history, have in all ages divided animals into four-footed beasts which walk on the earth, birds which fly, fishes which swim, and perhaps reptiles which creep. This is the classification found in the Babylonian and Hebrew narratives of the great flood. Plants they naturally divide into trees and herbs. It was not very long, however, before close observers became discontented with so simple a grouping. They discove

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The First English Naturalists.

During the greater part of three centuries (1300 to 1600), while the revival of learning and science was proceeding actively in Italy, France, Switzerland, and the Rhineland, England lagged behind. Humanist studies were indeed pursued with eminent success in the England of Sir Thomas More, but there was little else for national pride to dwell upon. The re-opening of ancient literature, the outpouring of printed books, the Reformation, the new mathematics and astronomy, the new botany and zoology

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The Rise of Experimental Physiology.

1543 is a memorable year in the history of science. Then appeared the treatise of Copernicus on the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies , completed long before, but kept back for fear of the cry of novelty and absurdity which, as he explains in his preface, dull men, ignorant of mathematics, were sure to raise. The aged astronomer, paralysed and dying, was able to hold his book in his hands before he passed away. In the same year Vesalius, a young Belgian anatomist, published his Structure of the

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The Natural History of Distant Lands (Sixteenth Century and Earlier).

Travel and commerce had made the ancient world familiar with many products of distant countries. Well-established trade routes kept Europe in communication with Arabia, the Persian Gulf, and India. Egyptians, Phœnicians, and Greeks explored every known sea, and brought to Mediterranean ports a variety of foreign wares. Under the Roman empire strange animals were imported to amuse the populace; silk, pearls, gay plumage, dyes, and drugs to gratify the luxury of the rich. Long after the fall of th

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Agriculture, Horticulture, and Silk-Culture in the Sixteenth Century.

During the darkest parts of the Middle Ages agriculture and horticulture were regularly practised. Tyranny, the greed of settlers, the inroads of barbarians, private war, and superstition may destroy all that brightens human life, but they hardly ever exterminate the population of large districts, [4] and so long as men live they must till the soil. The age of Charlemagne was one of cruel hardship to the inhabitants of Western Europe, but the cartularies of the great king show that the improveme

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Characteristics of the Period.

In Western Europe this was a time of consolidation succeeding to one of violent change. Religious wars gave place to dynastic and political wars. In France the tumults of the preceding hundred years sank to rest under the rule of a strong monarchy; order and refinement became the paramount aims of the governing classes; literature, the fine arts, and the sciences were patronised by the Court. Other nations imitated as well as they could the example of France. Learning was still largely classical

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The Minute Anatomists.

Magnifying glasses are of considerable antiquity. Seneca mentions the use of a glass globe filled with water in making small letters larger and clearer. Roger Bacon (1276) describes crystal lenses which might be used in reading by old men or those whose sight was impaired. As soon as Galileo had constructed his first telescopes, he perceived that a similar instrument might be caused to enlarge minute objects, and made a microscope which revealed the structure of an insect's eye. Within twenty ye

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Early Notions about the Nature of Fossils.

Throughout the sixteenth century naturalists held animated debates about the shells which are found far from the sea, and even on the top of high hills. Had they ever formed part of living animals or not? Such a question could hardly have been seriously discussed among simple-minded people; but the learned men of the sixteenth century were rarely simple-minded. They had been trained to argue, and argument could make it plausible that such shapes as these were generated by fermentation or by the

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Comparative Anatomy: the Study of Biological Types.

Between 1660 and 1740 the scope of natural history became sensibly enlarged. System had been hitherto predominant, but the systems had been partial, treating the vertebrate animals and the flowering plants with as much detail as the state of knowledge allowed, but almost ignoring the invertebrates and the cryptogams. System was now studied more eagerly than ever by such naturalists as Ray and Linnæus, but new aspects of natural history were considered, new methods practised, new groups of organi

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Adaptations of Plants and Animals: Natural Theology.

Natural adaptations and some of the problems which they suggest were much studied during this period. Bock and Cesalpini had discussed still earlier the mechanisms of climbing plants, aquatic plants, and plants which throw their seeds to a distance. Swammerdam figured, not for the first time, the sporangia and spores of a fern; Hooke the peristome of a moss. The early volumes of the Académie des Sciences contain many studies of natural contrivances. Perrault described the retractile claw of the

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Spontaneous Generation.

During many ages every naturalist thought that he had ample proof of the generation without parents of animals and plants. He knew that live worms appear in tightly-closed flasks of vinegar; that grubs may be found feeding in the cores of apples which show no external marks of injury; and that weeds spring up in gardens where nothing of the sort had been seen before. Certain kinds of animals and plants are peculiar to particular countries; what more likely than that they should be the offspring

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The Natural History of John Ray.

The sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries each possessed at least one naturalist of wide learning and untiring diligence, who made it his care to collect information concerning all branches of natural history, to improve system, and to train new workers. Gesner, Ray, and Linnæus occupied in succession this honourable position. Ray was originally a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, who had risen into notice by proficiency in academical studies. He then became inspired by the hope o

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The Scale of Nature.

No one can closely examine a large number of plants and animals without perceiving real or imaginary gradations among them. The gradation, shrews , monkeys , apes , man , is not very far from a real genealogical succession, confirmed by structural and historical proofs. The gradation, fish , whale , sheep , on the other hand, though it seemed equally plausible to early speculators, is not confirmed by structure and history. In the age of Aristotle and for long afterwards the ostrich was believed

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The Sexes of Flowering Plants.

As soon as men began to raise plants in gardens, or even earlier, they must have remarked that plants produce seeds, and that seeds develop into new plants. The Greeks (Empedocles, Aristotle, Theophrastus) recognised that the seed of the plant answers to the egg of the animal, which is substantially though not literally true. None of the three understood that a process of fertilisation always, or almost always, precedes the production of seed. Had the date-palm, whose sexes are separate, and whi

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Characteristics of the Period.

The chief historical events are the decline of the French monarchy, the French revolution, the rise of Prussia, the expansion of England, and the American Declaration of Independence. In the history of thought we remark the introduction of the historical or comparative method, which seeks to co-ordinate facts and to trace events to their causes. Science steadily grows in influence, and freethought wins many triumphs; this is the age of Voltaire, Rousseau, and the Encyclopædists, of David Hume, o

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Systems of Flowering Plants: Linnæus and the Jussieus.

Linnæus is remembered as a man of great industry, enterprise, and sagacity, who was inspired from boyhood by a passion for natural history and spent a long life in advancing it. He was early recognised as a leader in more than one branch of the study. L'Obel, Morison, and Ray had laboured to found a natural system of flowering plants, and it was they who laid the foundation upon which all their successors have built. The work did not, however, go steadily forward on the original plan. When Linnæ

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Réaumur and the History of Insects.

Réaumur was born to wealth, and made timely use of his leisure to study the sciences and win for himself a place among natural philosophers. His inclinations directed him first towards mathematics, physics, and, a little later, towards the practical arts. He took a leading part in a magnificent description of French industries, which had been undertaken by the Académie des Sciences. Not content with describing the processes in use, he perpetually laboured to improve them. The manufacture of stee

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The Budding-out of New Animals (Hydra): another Form of Propagation without Mating (Aphids).

In the year 1744 a young Genevese, Abraham Trembley, tutor in the family of Bentinck, who was then English resident at the Hague, rose into sudden fame by a solid and well-timed contribution to natural history. Trembley and his pupils used to fish for aquatic insects in the ponds belonging to the residence, and in the summer of 1740 he happened to collect some water-weeds, which he put into a glass vessel and set in a window. When the floating objects had come to rest, a small green stalk, barel

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The Historical or Comparative Method: Montesquieu and Buffon.

About the middle of the eighteenth century we remark the introduction of a new, or almost new, method of investigation, which was destined to achieve great results. Hitherto many men had been sanguine enough to believe that they could think out or decide by argument hard questions respecting the origin of what they saw about them. It was easier, but not really more promising, to resort to ancient books which contained the speculations of past generations of thinkers. Now at last men set themselv

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Amateur Students of Living Animals.

A history of biology would be incomplete which took no notice of every-day observations of the commonest forms of life. Some of the best are due to the curiosity of men with whom natural history was no more than an occasional recreation. William Turner (a preacher, who became Dean of Wells), Charles Butler (a schoolmaster), Caius and Lister (physicians), Claude Perrault (a physician and architect), Méry and Poupart (surgeons), Frisch (a schoolmaster and philologue), Lyonet (an interpreter and co

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Intelligence and Instinct in the Lower Animals.

The period with which we are now concerned (1741-1789) initiated the profitable discussion of the mental powers of animals. We are unable for lack of space to follow the investigation from period to period, and must condense into one short section whatever its history suggests. In the year 1660 Aristotelians were still discoursing about the vegetative and sensitive souls which bridged the gulf between inanimate matter and the thinking man. Descartes had tried to prove that the bodies of men and

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The Food of Green Plants.

Common observation taught men in very early times that green plants draw nourishment from the soil, and that sunlight is necessary to their health. In the age of Galileo a Belgian physician and chemist, Van Helmont, endeavoured to pursue the subject by experiment. He planted the stem of a live willow in furnace-dried earth, which was enclosed in an earthen vessel. Rain-water or distilled water was supplied when necessary, and dust excluded by a perforated lid. The loss of weight due to the falli

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The Metamorphoses of Plants.

Speculations concerning the nature of the flower roused at one time an interest far beyond that felt in most botanical questions. The literary eminence of Goethe, who took a leading part in the discussion, heightened the excitement, and to this day often prompts the inquiry: What does modern science think of the Metamorphoses of Plants? Let us first briefly notice some anticipations of Goethe's famous essay. In the last years of the sixteenth century Cesalpini, taking a hint from Aristotle, trie

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Early Notions about the Lower Plants.

The fathers of botany neglected everything else in order to concentrate their attention upon the flowering plants, from which very nearly all useful vegetable products were derived. The lack of adequate microscopes rendered it almost impossible to investigate the structure and life-history of ferns, mosses, fungi, and algæ until the nineteenth century. As late as the time of Linnæus it was possible to maintain that they developed spontaneously, though the great naturalist himself called them Cry

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Characteristics of the Period.

The first French republic and the first French empire were associated with a great outburst of scientific energy. French mathematics, astronomy, and physics were pre-eminent. England suffered from isolation during the continental war, but Davy, Young, the Herschels, Watt (now past his prime), Dalton, and William Smith supported the scientific reputation of their country. In Germany this was the age of Goethe and Schiller; Alexander von Humboldt was prominent among the scientific men of Prussia.

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Sprengel and the Fertilisation of Flowers.

Conrad Sprengel, an unsuccessful schoolmaster who lived in a Berlin attic and got his bread by teaching languages or whatever else his pupils wished to learn, wrote a book which marks an epoch in the study of adaptations. This was his Secret of Nature Discovered , which appeared in 1793. Half a century passed before its merit was recognised by any influential naturalist; even then the recognition was private, and never reached the author, who had died long before. There was no striking of medals

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Cuvier and the Rise of Palæontology.

If this historical sketch had been prepared within a few years of the death of Cuvier, it would no doubt have held him up as the greatest of zoologists and comparative anatomists. Nor would it have been hard to find reasons for such a verdict. His Règne Animal extended and corrected the zoological system of Linnæus; his comparative anatomy, and especially his comparative osteology, were far ampler and more exact than anything that had been attempted before. It would not have been forgotten, more

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Chamisso on the Alternation of Generations in Salpa.

Trembley (see p. 57) had shown that Hydra, though an animal, multiplies by budding like a plant. He got indications, upon which he did not altogether rely, that it also propagated by eggs, and ten years later (1754) this supposition was confirmed by Roesel, who figured the egg, though he was unable to demonstrate that a young Hydra issues from it; subsequent inquiry has placed the fact beyond doubt. In 1819 Chamisso announced that Salpa, a well-known Tunicate which abounds at the surface of the

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Baer and the Development of Animals.

The curiosity of the ancient Greeks led them to look for the chick within the egg, and Aristotle mentions the beating of the heart as a thing which might be observed in a third-day embryo. After the revival of science Fabricius of Acquapendente figured the chief stages of development, from the first visible rudiments to the escape from the egg-shell. Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation, not only studied the developing chick, but took advantage of the rare opportunity of dissecting breeding

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The Cell Theory.

Any one of the higher animals or plants admits of analysis into organs , each adapted to one or more functions. Bichât (1801) showed that the body of one of the higher animals is not only a collection of organs, but also a collection of tissues , and the same is true of the higher plants. Analysis of the organism was carried a step further when in 1838-9 Schleiden and Schwann announced that all the higher animals and plants are made up of cells , which were at first supposed to consist in every

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The Enrichment of English Gardens.

If some unreasonably patriotic Englishman should be seized with the whim of keeping none but truly British plants in his garden, he might enjoy the shade of the fir, yew, oak, ash, wych-elm, beech, aspen-poplar, hazel, rowan-tree, and the small willows, but he would have to forego the common elm, the larger poplars and willows, the larches, spruces, and cypresses, the rhododendrons, and all the shrubs popularly called laurels. Of fruits he might have the crab-apple, sloe, wild cherry, gooseberry

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Humboldt as a Traveller and a Biologist.

The career of Alexander von Humboldt (b. 1769, d. 1859), nearly coinciding with the period on which we are now engaged, was devoted to a gigantic task—nothing less than the scientific exploration of the globe. His great natural powers were first cultivated by wide and thorough training, not only in astronomy, botany, geology, mineralogy, and mining, which had an obvious bearing on his future enterprise, but also in anatomy, physiology, commerce, finance, diplomacy, and languages. Thus equipped,

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Premonitions of Biological Evolution.

The eighteenth century had done much to impress the minds of men with an orderly development in sun and planets (Kant and Laplace), in the institutions of human societies (Montesquieu), and in the moral aspirations of mankind (Lessing). Many bold attempts had been made to trace a like orderly development in the physical life of plants and animals (Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, etc.), but neither was the proof cogent nor the process intelligible. Cautious people therefore, and those whose prepossession

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Period V.

We do not attempt to characterise our last period, nor to describe its biological achievement. It seems better to devote the whole of our scanty space to the scientific careers of Darwin and Pasteur, in which so much past effort culminated, and from which so much progress was to spring....

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Darwin on the Origin of Species.

Setting aside as superfluous and we might say impossible, under our conditions of space, all attempt to restate the evidence on which Darwin based his great argument, we shall here try to show that the Origin of Species shed a new light upon many biological facts, combined many partial truths into one consistent theory, and gave a great stimulus to further inquiry. 1. Classification and Affinity. —The sixteenth-century herbalists and still earlier writers (see p. 17) recognised a property of aff

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Pasteur's Experimental Study of Microbes.

The same difficulty arises with Pasteur as with Darwin; his life-work has already been described often and well. Readers unversed in science have only to turn to the Vie de Pasteur , written by his son-in-law, Vallery-Radot, to find a luminous account, giving just so much detail as makes the discoveries intelligible and interesting. If shorter sketches are demanded, they exist. We must therefore above all things be brief, and content ourselves with reminding the reader of facts which, in spite o

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CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

1200-1850 (The date of a discovery is the date of first publication, where this is known.)...

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THE SUB-DIVISIONS OF BIOLOGY

Morphology: Anatomy. Minute Anatomy. Comparative Anatomy. Embryology. Physiology (including adaptations to the conditions of life). Psychology of Animals. Classification. Geographical Distribution. Palæontology. All these divisions, except Psychology, apply both to plants and animals. Many other modes of division have been proposed. [It will be readily understood that the literature of Biology is enormous, as a single fact will show. Half a century ago Dr. Hagen compiled a list of books and pape

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History of Biology or its Sub-Divisions.

Carus, V. Geschichte der Zoologie . 1864 foll. The French translation by Hagenmuller and Schneider (1880) will be preferred by some. Cuvier, G. Histoire des Sciences Naturelles . Publiée par M. de Saint-Agy. Two vols., 1841. Taken down from Cuvier's lectures, but not revised by him. Though far from trustworthy (the first volume especially), this history mentions many interesting facts, and suggests inquiries which may be pursued with advantage. Foster, Sir M. Lectures on the History of Physiolog

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