620 A CENTURY Of PROGRESS IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 



Die EnUvickhmgsgeschichte der Unke (Bombinator igneus) als Grundlage einer 

 vergleichende7i Moi'phologie der Wirbelthiere (1875). Alexander Goette (b. 1840, 

 d. 1922) was greatly influenced by the embryologist von Baer, and was himself a 

 teacher of Wilhelm Roux. His Bombinator monograph was the basis for his purely 

 mechanistic theory of evolution, which undoubtedly influenced Eoux's later 

 mechanistic concept of morphogenesis. It is also the prototype of all later descrip- 

 tive work on frog embryology. 



The second half of the nineteenth century was the Golden Age of the morpho- 

 logical sciences. Knowledge of the structure and development of amphibians and 

 reptiles, along with the other vertebrates, was enormously extended and deepened 

 during this period. Carl Gegenbaur (b. 1826, d. 1903), more than any other man, 

 is identified with this flowering of morphological interest. Darwin's evolutionary 

 ideas were becoming current at the very beginning of Gegenbaur's career, and he 

 grasped their significance at once, realizing that the phylogeny of vertebrate 

 structure provided comparative anatomy with the conceptual framework that 

 had previously been lacking. Our knowledge and understanding of the structure 

 of amphibians and reptiles was enormously increased as a by-product of the 

 research resulting from this reorientation. 



Gegenbaur himself contributed directly in a number of publications, but his 

 indirect influence on herpetology was far more important. Among his assistants 

 during his long career at Jena (1855-1872) and Heidelberg (1872-1900), Max 

 Fiirbringer, Friedrich Maurer, Ernst Goppert, and Georg Ruge added greatly 

 to the fund of knowledge, especially of the musculature and its innervation. His 

 pupils carried Gegenbaur's ideas beyond Jena and Heidelberg, and even beyond 

 the borders of Germany. Although the Gegenbaur tradition was never strong in 

 England or America, his pupils Hans Gadow (b. 1855, d. 1927) in England and 

 H. H. Wilder (b. 1864, d. 1928) and W. B. Scott (b. 1858, d. 1947) in America 

 were active and influential in the English-speaking world. 



Schools of associated workers, often with special orientations and traditions 

 that ran through several generations, were characteristic of central Europe. These 

 begin with one vigorous personality, who infects and often dominates others. The 

 Gegenbaur school, with its unflagging pursuit of the phylogeny of structures via 

 interpretative homologies, has already been mentioned. The output of this school 

 ran heavily to myology, a subject in which Gegenbauer himself was little inter- 

 ested. The myological orientation is probably attributable to Max Fiirbringer 

 (b. 1846, d. 1920). 



The Freiburg school, beginning with Ecker and Die Anatomie des FroscJies, 

 and continuing through Gaupp and Wiedersheim, centered its attention largely 

 on amphibians. In Vienna the towering figure of Joseph Hyrtl (b. 1811, d. 1894) 

 began a dynasty that lasted through three generations, until it was destroyed by 

 the Nazis in the years before World War II. Hyrtl's interest in the vascular sys- 

 tem is strongly reflected in the work of Emil Zuckerkandl (b. 1849, d. 1910), 

 Julius Tandler (b. 1869, d. 1936), and Anton Hafferl, and in the painstaking solu- 

 tion of problems arising in the medical dissecting room, which repeatedly inspired 

 extensive comparative researches based on the museum collections, and is evident 

 in most of the Vienna studies of this era. Most of this work, which has a charac- 

 teristic stamp, appeared in the Denkschriften and Sitzungsberichte of the Vienna 

 Academy. 



