Abstract
THE annual meeting of the Association of British Zoologists was held on January 5, in the rooms of the Zoological Society in Regent's Park, under the presidency of Prof. F. Balfour Browne. The morning session was given to a discussion of the general trends of zoological science at the present time. In opening the discussion, Prof. D. M. S. Watson defined zoology as the science of animal life in all its aspects. He emphasised the recent tendency of zoology to return from the strictly taxonomic and morphological outlook of the latter part of the last century to the more biological outlook of pre-Darwinian zoologists. He concluded that the reason for this tendency, in spite of the undeniable importance of a knowledge of comparative morphology for all branches of zoology, is that the time is now past when important alterations in our conceptions of morphology are likely to occur. He thinks that the greatest need to-day is a wider knowledge of the animal as a living thing, and of those branches of zoology, such as comparative physiology, embryology and genetics, on which knowledge of animal life must rest. In recent years this need has been brought even more clearly to the front by the great extension of the economic applications of zoology.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Association of British Zoologists. Nature 135, 112 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/135112a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/135112a0