LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

[Karl Ernst von Baer]Frontispiece
Figure [From Fuchs' "Historia Stirpium"]8
[Leonhard Fuchs]10
Comparative Figures of Skeletons of [Man] and [Bird], from Belon's Book of Birds14, 15
[Marcello Malpighi]31
[Antony van Leeuwenhoek]33
[John Ray]42
[Carolus Linnæus]53
[Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon]65
[Georges Cuvier]99

INTRODUCTION

Four hundred years ago, say in the year 1500, Biology, the science of life, was represented chiefly by a slight and inaccurate natural history of plants and animals. Botany attracted more students than any other branch, because it was recognised as a necessary aid to medical practice. The zoology of the time, extracted from ancient books, was most valued as a source from which preachers and moralists might draw impressive emblems. Anatomy and physiology were taught out of Galen to the more learned of physicians and surgeons. Some meagre notices of the plants and animals of foreign countries, mingled with many childish fables, eked out the scanty treatises of European natural history. It was not yet generally admitted that fossil bones, teeth, and shells were the remains of extinct animals.

It is the purpose of the following chapters to show how this insignificant body of information expanded into the biology of the twentieth century; how it became enriched by a multitude of new facts, strengthened by new methods and animated by new ideas.