It is due to Buffon to remark that he
clearly recognised this great fact. He says: "Ces deux genres d'etres
organises [les animaux et les vegetaux] ont beaucoup plus de proprietes
communes que de differences reelles." Therefore, it is not wonderful
that, at the beginning of the present century, in two different
countries, and so far as I know, without any intercommunication, two
famous men clearly conceived the notion of uniting the sciences which
deal with living matter into one whole, and of dealing with them as one
discipline. In fact, I may say there were three men to whom this idea
occurred contemporaneously, although there were but two who carried it
into effect, and only one who worked it out completely. The persons to
whom I refer were the eminent physiologist Bichat, and the great
naturalist Lamarck, in France; and a distinguished German, Treviranus.
Bichat[1] assumed the existence of a special group of "physiological"
sciences. Lamarck, in a work published in 1801,[2] for the first time
made use of the name "Biologie" from the two Greek words which signify a
discourse upon life and living things. About the same time it occurred
to Treviranus, that all those sciences which deal with living matter are
essentially and fundamentally one, and ought to be treated as a whole;
and, in the year 1802, he published the first volume of what he also
called "Biologie.
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