(a) Anthropology, the Science of Man and His Ancestors, treating of his nature, origin, development, division into races and tribes, society, industry, etc.
(b) Zoölogy, the Science of Animal Life, treating of the "lower animals," and of animal life in general as distinguished from the kingdom of the plants, although the related science of biology deals with both plants and animals, its special subject being the phenomena of life in its widest sense.
(c) Botany, the Science of Plant Life.
(d) Geography, combined with Physiography, the Science of the Face, or Superficies, of the Earth, dealing with lands and seas, rivers and mountains, political divisions, etc. This is covered in our series by the volume on Physiography.
(e) In this compartment several branches of science may be grouped, since they are all the product of study of things encountered on the earth's surface. They are:
Physics, the Science of the Forces of Nature, dealing with the laws of the inanimate world around us, including the phenomena relating to solid, liquid, and gaseous bodies and substances.
Chemistry, the Science of Matter and Its Changes, dealing with the atoms and their constituents, and with the combinations of atoms into molecules to form the various chemical elements, etc.
Electricity and Magnetism, the Science of Power, fundamentally underlying all other branches, and through its investigation of the nature of the constituents of atoms—the electrons—going deeper into the constitution of things than chemistry itself. In fact this science, in some respects, blends with chemistry, although it is quite separate when it deals with the mechanical developments of electromagnetism.
Medicine, the Science of Health, Physiology, the Science of the Body, Psychology, the Science of Human Behavior, Mechanics, the Science of Machinery, etc., also naturally fall into this category of Things on the Earth.
(a) Astronomy, the Science of the Heavenly Bodies.
(b) Meteorology, the Science of the Atmosphere, rains, winds, storms, fair and foul weather, the changes of the seasons, and essentially related to the new and fast developing art of aerial navigation.
(a) Geology, the Science of the Earth's Crust, or shell; which also deals with the various stratifications of the rocks, superposed one above another, and containing in the shape of fossils, and other marks, a wonderful record of the character and development of the living forms that have inhabited the earth during the long ages of the past. Of course some of the phenomena dealt with by geology are manifest on the earth's surface, and others, like volcanoes and earthquakes, hot springs and geysers, are partly subterranean and concealed from sight and partly evident by their effects on the surface.
(b) Closely associated with Geology are Mineralogy, the Science of the Constitution and Structure of Rocks and of Mineral and Metallic substances; Vulcanology, the Science of Volcanoes, and of earth disturbances in general; and the Science of Mining, which has several branches, and forms the basis of enormous industrial developments.
It is manifest, as before said, that the reader must be his own best judge as to the precise order in which to take up the perusal of the volumes in which this immense mass of scientific knowledge is presented. But, where there is no predisposition to choose one subject rather than another, or where there is a desire to follow, as nearly as may be, the natural line of development of human knowledge, it would be well to take first, after the history, the volume on astronomy, a science that from the beginning has had a peculiar power to awaken intellectual curiosity; then that on anthropology; then the various so-called "natural history" subjects, leaving the mechanical and the more technical subjects for the last.
Or, the reader might first take up the subjects of personal importance to every human being—Medicine, the Science of Health; Physiology, the Science of the Human Body; Psychology, the Science of the Mind—every one of which is essential to the proper care and preservation of life; and afterward study the other branches in the order already suggested.
Garrett P. Serviss