444 / ARTHUR THOMSON [junk 



detail of structure, such as the jelly of a frog's egg, is justified by its 

 utility. 



"Walt Whitman has it that "the tree-toad is a chef-d'osicvre for the 

 highest," but perhaps it is not necessary to go beyond the spawn to 

 learn the lesson taught to the apostolic fisherman that there is nothing 

 common or unclean. Unless we soon learn that, there must be some- 

 thing seriously wrong with our learning or with our teaching. 



Much of embryology is simply the anatomy of early stages, a 

 little of it is an attempt to understand the physiology of growth and 

 differentiation, and both these inquiries are obviously necessary to an 

 understanding of the organism, but it is not difficult to show that 

 embryology will be robbed of no small part of its interest and meaning 

 if the natural history note — the bionomical note — is not sounded. 

 The organism does not develop in vacuo, but in an actual environment, 

 often a very definite one, which supplies stimuli of undeniable im- 

 portance in liberating the developmental potencies, and imposes 

 conditions to which many of the details of development are evidently 

 adaptations. 



Similarly, a true appreciation of palaeontology must also recognise 

 the natural history note. For, although from one aspect palaeontology 

 only differs from anatomy in that the subjects of examination died 

 millions of years ago and are very badly preserved, from another 

 aspect palaeontology is the study of racial history. To speak of the 

 palaeontologist as a Dryasdust who pores over antediluvian vestiges, 

 as an anatomist under difficulties, as a fossil-hunter, as a burrower in 

 graveyards, is a caricature. The palaeontologist is the historian of the 

 times before history, the specialist on the rise and fall of races, the 

 student of " Werden and Vergehen," the biological scholar who 

 endeavours to interpret the present in the light of the past. Now, 

 just as it would be an imperfect archaeology which simply described 

 remains without reviving in imagination the ancient life, so it is an 

 imperfect palaeontology which does not, as cautiously as you will, at 

 least try to reconstruct not the skeleton only but the living creature 

 and the drama of life in which it played its part. 



On the other hand, we may again to advantage sound the natural 

 history note in recognising that what, after all, we especially require 

 of palaeontology is to give us a better understanding of the life of the 

 present. One step was taken by Cuvier, who insisted on ranking the 

 fossils along with the modern types in a unified zoological system. 

 Another step was taken, hesitatingly, by Louis Agassiz, who, though 

 no evolutionist, recognised that " the history of the individual is but 

 the epitomised history of the race " ; and a further step, which may be 

 called evolutionist, was taken when it was recognised that the present 

 is the child of the past, though we do not yet understand how it was 

 brought forth. These three steps have led us to feel that if we are 

 to understand the life of the present in its distribution, its relation- 



