i44 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



suits of investigations in portions of the world not often visited, and 

 thus has made contributions of inestimable value to science. The 

 study of animals in zoological gardens, if not in their native haunts, 

 and of marine life by sea-going expeditions, or in extensive experi- 

 mental stations by the seashore, as in Naples, Plymouth, England, or 

 Woods Hole, Mass., has given a new impulse to the study of zoology 

 and biology. The study of forms, especially those that are living, has 

 been of great advantage to the physician also. From the days of Galen 

 till the present time efforts have been made to apply the knowledge of 

 physical laws to bodily healing. Galvanism, electricity, the nature and 

 effect of different foods, the study of animal heat, have been made use 

 of by the physician. 



It is to Goethe that we are indebted for the word morphology, which 

 describes his ideas as to the metamorphosis of plants. He saw, even if 

 indistinctly, the unity of plant and animal life and the possible unity 

 of all departments of nature. Merz says : 



In the perpetual variety of change the morphological view tries to define 

 those recurring forms or types which present themselves again and again, towards 

 which all changes seem to revert, thus bringing some order into what would 

 otherwise be disorder and confusion. . . . The object of morphology as distinct 

 from that of classification is the attempt to describe, and if possible to compre- 

 hend and explain the relative similarity as well as the graduated differences of 

 form and structure which natural objects present to our gaze. 



Natural objects can best be studied where nature presents them, 

 under conditions which enable one to see them as they really exist in 

 nature. But the study of nature, as a whole, is often best carried on 

 by a study of its departments. Haiiy creates for us in his mastery of 

 the forms of crystals, and of the laws of crystallization, the science of 

 crystallography. It is but a step from crystals to minerals and fossils, 

 thence to plant and animal life. It is not surprising that, following 

 hints from various sources and from his own studies, Theodore 

 Schwann, having established the cellular theory of life, should assert, 

 as he did in 1840, the essential identity of animal and vegetable struc- 

 ture. Since then his special department of study has made vast strides 

 and ere long the science of biology may embrace everything in nature 

 that relates even remotely to life. 



Cuvier, the comparative anatomist, while cherishing large views, yet 

 believed in types, in the fixity of species, and explained the changes 

 produced in the world of animal life, the world of fossils, of plants and 

 minerals, by sudden convulsions or catastrophes, by means of which 

 old types of life are destroyed and new ones introduced. In this 

 theory he was opposed by Etienne St. Hilaire, who explained the 

 changes observable in the different departments of nature as the grad- 

 ual outcome of the forces of nature. In this view he had the sympathy 

 of Goethe. 



Morphology without the microscope to assist in its study would have 



