Applied biology : an elementary textbook and laboratory guide / by Maurice A. Bigelow and Anna N. Bigelow.

  • Maurice Bigelow
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Applied biology : an elementary textbook and laboratory guide / by Maurice A. Bigelow and Anna N. Bigelow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    chromatin of the fertilized egg-cell in all animals and plants, it follows that the new individual inherits from the two parents. However, there may be a more striking resem- blance to one parent. For example, the offspring of a pair of pigs of which one is white and one black are often some white, some black, and some spotted black and white. But the white and the black ones have also inherited from each parent, although in color they show relationship to only one parent. It often hap])ens that a pig which in color resembles one parent will, in shape of head and body, or other char- acteristics resemble the other. 503. Law and Order in Biology. — One who has never studied biology might look upon a vast museum of natu- ral history as a chaotic mass of specimens; but biologic science has reduced them to order. There are many hun- dred thousand kinds or species of living things which can be distinguished from one another; but after all, they are remarkably similar, for they are dependent upon the same fundamental substance, protoplasm, which must perforce carry on the same essential life-processes in all plants and animals. And what we find in biology is true in every other natural science. Everywhere in nature there is law and order. Planets and comets move in definite orbits, light and heat and electricity are subject to unchanging laws, elements unite and separate according to fixed principles — in short, all things in nature are conducted in accordance with law. It has been one aim of this book to make the reader realize that the whole organic world, the field of biology, is subject to definite laws to which the human species is by no means an exception. Man is certainly an integral part of organic nature, and it behooves him to study and ap])ly the discovered laws of biology upon which the continued advancement of the human race will, in no small measure, depend.