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