3 o6 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



its wonderful history, as revealed by the study of comparative 

 anatomy and embryology, and this knowledge confers upon it a 

 much more legitimate and scientific, if less popular, interest than 

 that which formerly attached to it as the supposed " seat of the 

 soul." What we now want, more than anything else, in order 

 to extend our knowledge in this direction, is a series of careful 

 physiological investigations, by experimental methods, into the 

 functions of the pineal organs, not only in those forms in which 

 one of them still retains the structure of a sense-organ, but also 

 in those in which such structure can no longer be recognised 

 and the " epiphysis " appears to have undergone a complete 

 change of function and assumed the character of a ductless 

 gland. 



