EARLIER STUDENTS OF EVOLUTION. 3 1 



science from the iron chains of dogmatism, that human 

 Anatomy and the History of the Evolution of Man could 

 move again more freely, with the re-opening of research in 

 other natural sciences. But Ontogeny remained far behind 

 Anatomy, and it was only in the beginning of the seven- 

 teenth century that the first ontogenetic publications 

 appeared. The first to begin was the Italian anatomist, 

 Fabricius ab Aquapendente, Professor at Padua, who pub- 

 lished two works — De Formato Foetu (1G00), and De 

 Formatione Foetus (1604), — which contain the oldest 

 figures and descriptions of the embryo of Man and other 

 Mammals, and also of the Chick. Similar imperfect 

 representations were given soon after by Spigelius — De 

 Formato, Foetu (1631) — by the Englishman, Needham 

 (1667), and his celebrated countryman, Harvey (1652). The 

 latter discovered the circulation of the blood in the animal 

 body, and made the important assertion : Omne vivum ex 

 ovo ("Everything living comes from an Qgg"). The Dutch 

 naturalist, Swammerdam, in his " Bible of Nature," pub- 

 lished the results of the first investigations into the 

 embryology of the Frog, and the so-called segmentation of 

 its yelk. The most important ontogenetic researches of the 

 seventeenth century, however, were those of the Italian, 

 Marcello Malpighi of Bologna, who gave a fresh impetus 

 both to Zoology and to Botany. His two dissertations, De 

 Formatione Fulli, and De Ovo Incubato (1687), contain the 

 first connected description of the history of the development 

 of the chick in the incubated egg. 



Here I must make some remarks on the great importance 

 of the Chick in relation to our science. The history of the 

 formation of a Chick, as well as of all birds, accurately 



