Mr. T. H. Huxley on the Method of Paleontology. 47 



always associated with horns, with slender limbs, and with cleft 

 hooves ; but I could never have divined these things from 

 knowing that the jaw and tooth were specially adapted to a 

 herbivorous diet. " *:i\ 



Surely all this is so obvious as to need no great amount oi 

 demonstration, and no less clear is its application to the ques- 

 tion. What is the method of palaeontology ? How is it that we 

 are able to restore an extinct animal from some fragments of its 

 skeleton ? It is by deduction from those empirical laws of 

 morphology which express the invariable coexistences of structure, 

 so far as observation has yet made them known to us, and it is 

 by this method only. When once the general nature of an 

 extinct animal has been ascertained, the laws of physiology may 

 help us to very useful hints and guesses ; but the fundamental 

 steps towards the determination of the nature of any unknown 

 fragment, whether recent or fossil, are purely morphological, 

 and, so far as they are concerned, physiology might be non- 

 existent. 



The truth of what has just been asserted must long have been 

 familiar to every thinking botanical palaeontologist ; and I have 

 never met with any indication, either in their works or in con- 

 versation, that the botanists imagined they were guided in their 

 determinations of extinct plants by any reference to physiological 

 correlation, or by any other method than deduction from purely 

 empirical morphological laws. Nor does the palaeontologist, who 

 concerns himself with invertebrate forms, often seek for help from 

 physiology. In fact, the total absence of any acquaintance with 

 physiology which many excellent palaeontologists manifest, is a 

 curious illustration of the justice of my line of argument, as it 

 nowise interferes with the soundness of their work, — so long as 

 they confine themselves to such purely morphological questions 

 as are involved in the restoration of extinct forms. 



Nor can I find that in practice those palaeontologists who 

 have studied the Vertebrata trouble themselves much about phy- 

 siological correlations or adaptations to purpose. The reader of 

 Cuvier's " Ossemens fossiles" might begin at the tenth volume 

 and read on to the second, and while he would be astounded at the 

 enormous knowledge of the laws of morphology — of the observed 

 coexistence of parts which it displays — he would find himself 

 very rarely troubled with any remarks upon physiological corre- 

 lations or adaptations ; and any which might offer themselves 

 would be entirely subordinate to the great object of the work, 

 which is, to apply the purely empirical laws of morphological 

 correlation, which have been ascertained to obtain among living- 

 beings, to the elucidation of fossil remains. „......^^... .. .-. 



