260 KKNST IIAKCKKL AM) CAUL (il-XJKMJArU 



though in a crude, dogmatic and extreme manner, the 

 main hypotheses upon which evolutionary morphology is 

 founded, his historical importance is considerable. He 

 cannot perhaps be regarded as typical of the morpholo- 

 gists of his time he was too trenchantly materialistic, too 

 much the populariser of a crude and commonplace philosophy 

 of Nature. In point of concrete achievement in the field of 

 pure research he fell notably behind many of his con- 

 temporaries. 



His friend, Carl Gegenbaur, who gained a great and 

 well-deserved reputation by his masterly studies on verte- 

 brate morphology, 1 was a sounder man, and probably 

 exercised a wider and certainly a more wholesome influence 

 upon the younger generation of professional morphologists 

 than the more brilliant Haeckel. It is true that in his 

 famous Grundzngc der vergleichenden Anatomic, the second 

 edition of which, published in 1870, soon came to be 

 regarded as the classical text-book of evolutionary morphol- 

 ogy, Gegenbaur enunciated very much the same general 

 principles as Haeckel, and referred to the Gcncrcllc Morphol- 

 ogic as the chief and fundamental work on animal mor- 

 phology. But in Gegenbaur's pages the Haeckelian doctrines 

 are modified and subdued by the strong commonsense and 

 thorough appreciation of the older classical or Cuvierian 

 morphology that characterise Gegenbaur's work. Accord- 

 ing to Haeckel,- Gegenbaur was greatly influenced by 

 J. M tiller, who, as we know, laid as much stress on function 

 as on form. 



The "General Part" of Gegenbaur's text-book is in many 

 ways a significant document and deserves close attention. 



We note first of all that physiology and morphology arc 

 considered by Gegenbaur to be entirely distinct sciences, 

 with different subject-matter and different methods. " The 

 task of physiology is the investigation of the function's of the 

 animal body or of its parts, the referring back of these 

 functions to elementary processes and their explanation by 



1 Untcrsuchiin^cn zur vergl. Anatomic d. //';>/>< 7////V;v, Leipzig, i., 

 1864 ; ii., 1865 ; and iii., 1872. 



- " U. d. Uiologie in Jena wiihrend des 19 Jahrlumderts," Jcnaische 

 Zt'itschriff, xxxix., pp. 713-26, 1905. 



