MODERN BIOLOGY 355 



and the like. Occasionally, however, his criticism goes beyond the mark; he 

 expresses doubt not only of Gall's theory of the nerves' leading to the grey 

 matter of the brain, but also of the existence of sensory and motor nerves. 

 The caution with which he treats current theories is at any rate attractive. 

 Space forbids a more detailed account of his exposition of the digestive 

 organs, respiration, and the musculature; these organs and their functions are 

 described with the same thoroughness and care that marked his previous 

 chapter. The whole work testifies, even in its incomplete form, to the strides 

 that exact research had already made during the first decades of the nineteenth 

 century, as regards both methods and results, foreshadowing the immense 

 successes of subsequent periods. 



Contemporary with Rudolphi there was working in Germany a scientist 

 who made important contributions in the sphere of exact biology, although 

 in his theoretical conceptions he maintained the point of view of the natural 

 philosophy of the time. Johann Friedrich Meckel was born at Halle in 

 1781. Both his father and his grandfather had been professors in anatomy 

 there; both had by their keenness and insight improved the anatomical 

 collection existing there — especially the father, who had even declared in 

 his will that his skeleton was to be mounted and set up in the museum. 

 Young Meckel followed in their footsteps; having matriculated and taken 

 his degree at Halle, he worked for a year or two with Cuvier and afterwards 

 made a tour through Europe. At the age of twenty-five he was appointed 

 professor in his native town, where he worked until his death, in 1833. 

 During his lifetime he exercised great influence both as a teacher and as a re- 

 search-worker, and not least as a result of his having undertaken the publica- 

 tion of Reil's above-mentioned Archiv, in which he developed his own ideas 

 and gave accounts of a number of special investigations. These partly fall 

 within the sphere of descriptive and comparative anatomy, and partly they arc 

 purely speculative and philosophical. In the former sphere Meckel proved a 

 worthy pupil of Cuvier, while in the theoretical sphere he was undoubtedly 

 influenced by GeofFroy Saint-Hilaire. The name of "the German Cuvier," 

 which his contemporaries gave him, thus only partially corresponds to his 

 point of view; what made him most worthy of the title was the work he did 

 by exhortation and example to introduce into Germany the study of com- 

 parative anatomy, which in course of time was to reach its highest develop- 

 ment in that very country. Amongst his contemporaries, at any rate, there 

 was not one, with the exception of Cuvier, who had mastered the anatomy of 

 all animal forms, both higher and lower, so thoroughly as he, though his most 

 important investigations he carried out in the field of vertebrate anatomy. 



Meckel's system of comparative anatomy 

 Of these specialized investigations of Meckel's the most exhaustive are his 

 anatomical monographs on the ornithorynchus and the cassowary, but 



