MODERN BIOLOGY 503 



and wrong, according as new facts have come to life. Thanks, however, to 

 his lirm convictions and will-power, Gegenbaur succeeded in compelling a 

 whole generation to follow his line of thought. Research on the subject of 

 origin was regarded as the most important function of science, and thus, 

 to quote his foremost and most independent disciple, Oscar Hertwig, hy- 

 pothesis was made the main point of evolution in science. And it must be 

 admitted that these theoretical speculations on the problem of descent have 

 had a highly stimulating effect upon morphological research; a number of 

 practical discoveries of the greatest value and of the highest significance for 

 the development of biology have been made by the Gegenbaur school. Even 

 to this very day comparative anatomy contains problems still unsolved and 

 still attracts investigators of worth. And though the purely speculative prob- 

 lems of descent do not, it is true, predominate to such an extent as formerly, 

 the presupposed common origin nevertheless still forms the basis on which 

 rest present-day homological investigations. But comparative anatomy 

 has certainly had to abandon its monopoly of biology and to recognize other 

 biological tendencies and methods as being equally justified in their 

 existence. 



Furbringer on the system of birds 

 Of Gegenbaur's disciples the, majority naturally came from Germany, but 

 students also flocked to his institute from Scandinavia, England, and Russia. 

 Chief of these was Max Furbringer. Born in 1846, he eventually joined 

 Gegenbaur as a pupil at Jena-and accompanied him to Heidelberg as pro- 

 sector. Having for a time been professor at Amsterdam and Jena, he succeeded 

 his master at Heidelberg and faithfully preserved the latter's traditions. He 

 carried out comparative investigations in many fields; the excretal organs 

 of the vertebrates as compared with those of the Annelida, and the evolution 

 of the scapular regions are two of his best-known contributions to compara- 

 tive anatomy. He is chiefly to be remembered, however, for his Untersuch- 

 ungen ziif Morphologie und Systematik der Vogel, a monumental work in both 

 size and content. The first half of it consists of a comparative study on the 

 Gegenbaur model of the region of the breast, shoulder, and wing through- 

 out the whole order of birds. To this is added a general systematic section 

 setting forth the natural bird-system based on a comprehensive comparative 

 investigation of representatives of all the bird families. This system, which 

 is now universally accepted, has entirely re-formed the bird class; the old 

 orders are for the most part exploded — the owls, for instance, are trans- 

 ferred to the nightjars; the falcons and the vultures are placed next to the 

 petrels, herons, and storks — an example of how intensive anatomical in- 

 vestigations may give to the family relationships an entirely different value 

 from that of ancient tradition. One of Fiirbringer's advantages is that he 

 avoids the fanciful elements in the descent theories in which his age other- 

 wise abounds; he investigates the extant birds, but produces no reconstructed 



