General Tendencies Since Darwin Darwin may be said to have founded the science of bionomics, and at the same time to have given new stimulus and new direction to morphography, physiology, and plasmology, by uniting them as contributories to one common biological doctrine-the doctrine of organic evolution-itself but a part of the wider doctrine of universal evolution based on the laws of physics and chemistry.
In the branch of bionomics, however, concerned with the laws of variation and heredity (thremmatology), there has been considerable progress.
Another important development of Darwin's conclusions deserves special notice here, as it is the most distinct advance in the department of bionomics since Darwin's own writings, and at the same time touches questions of fundamental interest.
While some observers have studied in detail the structure and life-history of a few selected types (insect anatomy and development), others have made a more superficial examination of large series of insects to classify them and determine their relationships (systematic entomology), while others again have investigated the habits and life-relations of insects (insect bionomics).
Thus Bionomics is treated in such articles as Evolution, Heredity, Variation, Mendelism, Reproduction, Sex, &C.; Zoo-dynamics under Medicine, Surgery, Physiology, Anatomy, Embryology, and allied articles; Plasmology under Cytology, Protoplasm, &C.; and Philosophical Zoology under numerous headings, Evolution, Biology, &C. See also Zoological Distribution, Palaeontology, Ocranography, Microtomy, &C.