THE HISTORY OF COMPARATIVE ANATOMY 595 



decline towards the end of the half-century is evident in every 

 group, although it does not always begin at the same time. 

 In molluscs, for example, the rise continues up to 1845, fr° m 

 which point there is a sudden drop to the neighbourhood of 

 zero. In arthropods the decline dates from about 1845, but 

 continues more slowly than in any other group except fishes, 

 so that by i860 arthropods are receiving more attention 

 even than mammals. In birds the bottom is reached by 1848, 

 but from this date there is a marked and continuous advance 

 — the only group in which this occurs. Reptiles rapidly lose 

 ground shortly after 1830, but fishes drop from 1840, and 

 then but slowly. The loss of interest in mammalian anatomy 

 is relatively considerable after the strong position occupied 

 by them in 1835, when no group except arthropods was half 

 as attractive. Echinoderms decline from 1840, and by i860 

 have completely lost their interest for the anatomist, but the 

 smaller animals such as protozoa and vermidea now begin 

 to be attacked from the morphological standpoint. The 

 investigation of individual organs and sets of organs has been 

 pursued spasmodically since 1600, and even before that time, 

 but it was the nineteenth-century revival which produced the 

 greatest, and a considerable, outcrop of publications of this 

 type, when the influence of Cuvier and his followers was at 

 its height. Works of an encyclopaedic or textbook character, 

 the harvest of assiduous compilation, were initiated in the 

 earliest days of comparative anatomy, and they begin to 

 appear more or less regularly from 1670. It is, however, 

 important to note that the nineteenth-century revival, though 

 adding inevitably to the number of such works, is a time of 

 original research rather than of industrious book-making. 

 Hence the general graph would not be materially affected if 

 these publications were withdrawn. 



If fig. 1 be compared with the graph illustrating the history 

 of zoological museums already published, it will be noted 

 that in the latter the seventeenth-century revival is not repre- 

 sented. As the anatomical museum owes its development to 

 Ruysch, whose influence can hardly have been considerable 

 before 1700, this is not surprising. The museum chart again 

 differs from the anatomical graph in the bulge it exhibits be- 

 tween 1737 and 1772. This is not due to an interest in ana- 

 tomical museums, of which very few were founded even at 



