Excerpt from Biology, an Introductory Study for Use in Colleges
This work is intended to serve as an introduction to the study of botany and zoology. It has been for some time recognized that there is a series of laws and principles which relate both to animal and plant life, and another series of important facts which refer to the relations of animals and plants to each other. In helping to a comprehension of nature, these interrelations are really of more significance than the detailed study of certain animals and plants. But with the tendency shown frequently in our educational system, to divide biology into zoology and botany, there is danger that these fundamental truths and interrelations be neglected, since a consideration of them belongs strictly neither to zoology nor to botany.
To students of the age of those in secondary schools, the study of such concrete facts as the description of animals and plants is most attractive; and for them, courses in elementary botany and zoology are eminently appropriate. But to students of the greater maturity of college grade, the study of the fundamental biological laws is more stimulating and better calculated to develop the thinking powers. It is, therefore, the author"s belief that the proper way for older students to begin the study of the great department of biology is to consider the fundamental principles relating to both animals and plants, before either of these groups is studied in detail. After the student turns his attention more particularly to zoology or botany, he is likely to be engrossed in the details of the life and structure of animals and plants, and so almost inevitably neglects the broader fundamental laws which should correlate the phenomena of life as one science. Unless, therefore, the foundation principles of biology be studied as an introductory course, it is very probable that they will be neglected.
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