Abstract
THE aim of this book is to explain to the student and to the general reader what have been the main movements in the development of zoology. In the nineteenth century, with which the author begins, the outstanding biological advances were the discovery of protoplasm, the formulation of the cell-theory, the establishment of the doctrine of evolution, the rise of bacteriology, and the beginning of the experimental study of heredity. After interesting chapters on taxonomy and Linnæsus, on comparative anatomy and Cuvier, on embryology and von Baer, on physiology and Claude Bernard, the author indicates what seem to him to be the five chief pathways—structural zoology, systematic zoology, general physiology, experimental zoology, and philosophical zoology. This does not seem very satisfactory, for “systematic zoology” is taken to include classification (which belongs to morphology), ecology and study of habits (which belong to physiology); and “experimental zoology” is, as Prof. Locy says, “more a method of general application than a subdivision.”
The Main Currents of Zoology.
By Prof. W. A. Locy. Pp. vii + 216. (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1918.)
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T., J. The Main Currents of Zoology . Nature 102, 45 (1918). https://doi.org/10.1038/102045a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/102045a0