is not a classificatory and a dependent science, but a mother science, like chemistry.  It expounds the peculiarities of living bodies, as such, and the laws of living processes—­such processes as assimilation, nutrition, respiration, innervation, reproduction, and so on.  One division is Vegetable Physiology, which is generally fused with the classificatory science of botany.  Animal Physiology is allied with zoology, but more commonly stands alone.  Lastly, the Physiology of the Human animal has been from time immemorial a distinct branch of knowledge, and is, of course, the chief of them all.  Man being the most complicated of all organised beings, not only are the laws of his vitality the most numerous, and the most practically interesting, but they go far to include all that is to be said of the workings of animal life in general.  Thus, then, the mother science of Biology, as a general or fundamental science, comprises Vegetable, Animal, and Human physiology.  The classificatory adjunct sciences are Botany and Zoology.  It is in the various aspects of the mother science that we look for the account of all vital phenomena, and all practical applications to the preservation of life.  Even if we stop at these, we shall have a full command of the laws of the animate world.  But we may go farther, and embrace the sciences that arrange, classify, and describe the innumerable host of living beings.  These have their own independent interest and value, but they are not the sciences that of themselves teach us the living processes.

Thus, then, a proper scheme of scientific instruction starts from the essential, fundamental, and law-giving sciences—­Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Mind.  It then proceeds to the adjunct branches —­such as Mineralogy, Botany, Zoology:  and I might add others, as Geology, Meteorology, Geography, no one of which is primary; for they all repeat in new connections, and for special purposes, the laws systematically set forth in the primary sciences.

In the foregoing remarks, I do not advance any new or debatable views.  I believe the scientific world to be substantially in accord upon all that I have here stated; any differences that there are in the manner of expressing the points do not affect my present purpose—­namely, to discuss the scheme of the mathematical and physical sciences as set forth in the Civil Service Examinations.

[BAD GROUPINGS OF SCIENCES.]

Under Mathematics (pure and mixed) the Commissioners (in their Scheme of 1875), include mathematics, properly so called, and those departments of natural philosophy that are mathematically handled—­statics, dynamics, and optics.  But the next branch, entitled “Natural Science,” is what I am chiefly to remark upon.  Under it there is a fivefold enumeration:  —­(1) Chemistry, including Heat; (2) Electricity and Magnetism; (3) Geology and Mineralogy; (4) Zoology; (5) Botany.  I cannot pretend to say where the