Discourses: Biological & Geological: EssaysHuxley, Thomas Henry
Science
Discourses: Biological & Geological: Essays
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Biology; Geology
Zoological morphology is the doctrine of animal form or structure.
Anatomy is one of its branches; development is another; while
classification is the expression of the relations which different animals
bear to one another, in respect of their anatomy and their development.
Zoological distribution is the study of animals in relation to the
terrestrial conditions which obtain now, or have obtained at any previous
epoch of the earth's history.
Zoological physiology, lastly, is the doctrine of the functions or
actions of animals. It regards animal bodies as machines impelled by
certain forces, and performing an amount of work which can be expressed
in terms of the ordinary forces of nature. The final object of physiology
is to deduce the facts of morphology, on the one hand, and those of
distribution on the other, from the laws of the molecular forces of
matter.
Such is the scope of zoology. But if I were to content myself with the
enunciation of these dry definitions, I should ill exemplify that method
of teaching this branch of physical science, which it is my chief
business to-night to recommend. Let us turn away then from abstract
definitions. Let us take some concrete living thing, some animal, the
commoner the better, and let us see how the application of common sense
and common logic to the obvious facts it presents, inevitably leads us
into all these branches of zoological science.
I have before me a lobster. When I examine it, what appears to be the
most striking character it presents? Why, I observe that this part which
we call the tail of the lobster, is made up of six distinct hard rings
and a seventh terminal piece. If I separate one of the middle rings, say
the third, I find it carries upon its under surface a pair of limbs or
appendages, each of which consists of a stalk and two terminal pieces. So
that I can represent a transverse section of the ring and its appendages
upon the diagram board in this way.
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