worked it out completely.  The persons to whom I refer were the eminent physiologist Bichat, and the great naturalist Lamarck, in France; and a distinguished German, Treviranus.  Bichat[1] assumed the existence of a special group of “physiological” sciences.  Lamarck, in a work published in 1801,[2] for the first time made use of the name “Biologie” from the two Greek words which signify a discourse upon life and living things.  About the same time it occurred to Treviranus, that all those sciences which deal with living matter are essentially and fundamentally one, and ought to be treated as a whole; and, in the year 1802, he published the first volume of what he also called “Biologie.”  Treviranus’s great merit lies in this, that he worked out his idea, and wrote the very remarkable book to which I refer.  It consists of six volumes, and occupied its author for twenty years—­from 1802 to 1822.

That is the origin of the term “Biology;” and that is how it has come about that all clear thinkers and lovers of consistent nomenclature have substituted for the old confusing name of “Natural History,” which has conveyed so many meanings, the term “Biology” which denotes the whole of the sciences which deal with living things, whether they be animals or whether they be plants.  Some little time ago—­in the course of this year, I think—­I was favoured by a learned classic, Dr. Field of Norwich, with a disquisition, in which he endeavoured to prove that, from a philological point of view, neither Treviranus nor Lamarck had any right to coin this new word “Biology” for their purpose; that, in fact, the Greek word “Bios” had relation only to human life and human affairs, and that a different word was employed by the Greeks when they wished to speak of the life of animals and plants.  So Dr. Field tells us we are all wrong in using the term biology, and that we ought to employ another; only he is not quite sure about the propriety of that which he proposes as a substitute.  It is a somewhat hard one—­“zootocology.”  I am sorry we are wrong, because we are likely to continue so.  In these matters we must have some sort of “Statute of Limitations.”  When a name has been employed for half-a-century, persons of authority[3] have been using it, and its sense has become well understood, I am afraid that people will go on using it, whatever the weight of philological objection.

Now that we have arrived at the origin of this word “Biology,” the next point to consider is:  What ground does it cover?  I have said that, in its strict technical sense, it denotes all the phenomena which are exhibited by living things, as distinguished from those which are not living; but while that is all very well, so long as we confine ourselves to the lower animals and to plants, it lands us in considerable difficulties when we reach the higher forms of living things.  For whatever view we may entertain about the nature of man, one thing is perfectly certain, that he is a living creature.