NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 125 



technical naturalists were such on account of their pursuing an 

 analytic method. The pseudo-natural school decided on the 

 affinities of organic tj^pes by their "physiognomy" or their fades 

 habit and the like, reading nature with an artist's eye, and at- 

 taining opinions of systems without the trouble of much ana- 

 tomical study. They' protested against the strict adhesion to 

 " technical" (or structural) characters, saying that they violate 

 " natural affinities" oftener than support or express them. Thus 

 their systems become pl^siognomical, and please the eye by 

 their appearance, rather than the mind by their expression of ex- 

 act structural relations ; in accordance with this s} r stem, species 

 were always well distinguished, and could not have been derived 

 from common parents, but that nevertheless everything " runs 

 together," and that the higher groupings are mainly " opiniona- 

 tive," in fact, that, although nature has a beautiful system, we 

 do not yet understand it, and that it is "too soon to generalize." 

 Perhaps this obscurity has its advantages, as it certainly shelters 

 in its profundities any theory of creation its supporters may 

 choose to adopt. Hence they might be called the Anaesthetic 

 school, or the Ansesthesiasts (si' alidr,^). 



The unnatural school think that the wav of determining" the 

 origin and relations of an object is to ascertain of what it is com- 

 posed. This was to be accomplished b}^ analysis of all its ap- 

 pearances, and an account taken of every character. In this way 

 the structure is learned, and a system based on anatomy is estab- 

 lished. As anatomical systems are unnatural, and anatomical 

 characters very difficult to discover by the ansesthesiasts, they 

 regard such systems with disfavor, although they admit that they 

 constitute the only correct classification of bones, teeth, brains, etc. 

 The analysts even find that species having very close specific 

 relationships occasionally present different generic characters. 

 This was proof positive to the Anoesthesiasts of the errors of the 

 technical school. But it was still less to their credit that they laid 

 stress on variations and monstrosities, which were mere accidents. 

 The fact that the analyzers bglieved in the development of species, 

 showed their systems to be unnatural. 



The speaker did not take sides, but observed that, in order to 

 ascertain the relations of a species, he usually examined it first. 



Mr. Thomas Meehan said he had recently read, in the published 

 Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, the report of 

 a discussion between Professor Cope and Mr. Eli K. Price in re- 

 gard to the Hypothesis of Evolution. Mr. Price appeared to lay 

 much stress on the assumed fact that variations were rather the 

 result of interference by art with the regular flow of natural laws, 

 and that it was therefore unphilosophical to attempt to found any 

 theory of evolution on the facts of variation. 



For himself he might say, that no theory of development, so far 



