Geology, by its study of earth deposits, age of rocks, etc., and by its estimate of the date of certain extinct animals like the mammoth and hairy elephant, or of the time when certain animals, e.g., the elephant and reindeer, were found in parts of the world where they no longer occur, is an important adjunct to the science of anthropology, especially in the question of the antiquity of man. On this see the section of antiquity of man in the article Anthropology (Vol. 2, p. 114), and, in general, the chapter in this Guide on Anthropology and Ethnology.

From one point of view geology is only a branch of geography and the student of geology should consult the elaborate article on Geography in the Britannica, especially all parts dealing with physical geography or physiography. For a clue to this part of the book see the chapter in this Guide on Geography.

The following is a list of the more important articles on Geology in the Encyclopaedia Britannica:

LIST OF ARTICLES IN THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA OF SPECIAL INTEREST TO STUDENTS OF GEOLOGY

CHAPTER LVII
BIOLOGY
GENERAL AND INTRODUCTORY

The Britannica tells us that Sir Thomas Browne, the famous 17th century physician and author, once ventured to doubt “whether mice may be bred by putrefaction,” and Alexander Ross, the poet scientist of 200 years ago, commenting on his scepticism wrote, “So may he doubt whether in cheese and timber worms are generated; or if beetles and wasps in cows’ dung; or if butterflies, locusts, grasshoppers, shell-fish, snails, eels, and such like, be procreated of putrefied matter, which is apt to receive the form of that creature to which it is by formative power disposed. To question this is to question reason, sense and experience. If he doubts of this let him go to Egypt, and there he will find the fields swarming with mice, begot of the mud of Nylus, to the great calamity of the inhabitants” (Vol. 1, p. 64). To-day science gives no offhand answer to the question of the origin of life. Abiogenesis, or “spontaneous generation,” so-called, finds a far less simple definition and research still in vain bends its best energies to solving this problem of problems.

The subject is so vast, dealing as it does with all the phenomena manifested by living matter, that in this Guide that branch of the subject which studies the human organism is separately dealt with in the chapter Health and Disease. This chapter, therefore, is confined to the still enormous subject of biology considered as dealing with the general problem of life; botany and zoology are treated in the following chapters. The student of either of the two last subjects should preface, or at least supplement, his studies, by reading the main general articles included below.

The Study of Life

The guiding article Biology (Vol. 3, p. 954), which should be read first, serves as a key to the discussion of the biological sciences. It is not long, for the main divisions of the subject are treated more conveniently and logically under their own appropriate headings. P. Chalmers Mitchell, secretary of the Zoological Society of London, who organized the whole subject for the new Britannica, is the contributor. Supplementing this, the article Life (Vol. 16, p. 600), also by Chalmers Mitchell, should be read, with those on Protoplasm (Vol. 22, p. 476), Species (Vol. 25, p. 616), Abiogenesis (Vol. 1, p. 64), Biogenesis (Vol. 3, p. 952). In the two articles last named the theory of spontaneous generation is examined and found wanting, or at best unproved.