84 CLASSIFICATION OF MEDUS#. 
It is not a vague generalization founded merely on book-reading, but an induction interpreted 
by a naturalist combining the philosophic spirit with the requisite observing power,—equally 
capable of, and practised in, minute specific research and speculative studies. The Ray 
Society did great service to British science when it sent out a translation of the remarkable 
essay alluded to under the able superintendence of Mr. Busk. This, I am sure, the most 
severe critic upon Steenstrup who has yet appeared—my distinguished and learned friend 
Dr. Carpenter—would be the first to admit, and it were greatly to be desired that some other 
critics on the publications of our Society had a tithe of his knowledge, reasoning power, and 
gentlemanly spirit. 
In a review, ‘‘on the Development and Metamorphoses of Zoophytes,’* devoted chiefly 
and most honorably to rendering justice to the untiring labours of Sir John Graham Dalyell, 
the worthy representative of Spallanzani among living naturalists, Dr. Carpenter has opposed 
in strong terms the views of Steenstrup, and, it seems to me, has not done justice—uninten- 
tionally without doubt—to the labours and theory of the Danish naturalist. 
Thus the omission zz limine of the name of Steenstrupt in the list (“ Sars, Siebold, 
Loven, and Van Beneden”) of principal practical continental observers of the phenomena upon 
which the theory of that author, and the new interpretation proposed by Dr. Carpenter, are 
based, is not right, since it conveys the impression to the reader that the Danish zoologist 
theorized on this subject from the researches of others only ; whereas, in reality, some of the 
most valuable observations on the polypiform transformations, were those made by Steenstrup 
himself, detailed in the second chapter of his Essay—that on the “development of the claviform 
polypes.” In fact, so far as the subject of this Monograph is concerned, the observations 
referred to, and those of Dujardin (whose name has also been inadvertently omitted by the 
reviewer), are more important than any others in establishing the affinity of the naked-eyed 
Medusa with the Corynoid Polypes. Moreover, the discoveries and researches among the 
Entozoa, announced in the ‘ Essay on the Alternation of Generations,’ are the fruits of its 
author’s special observation, and among the strongest pillars of the edifice which he has built. 
Let not any one suppose, then, that Steenstrup ingeniously constructed a mere closet-theory. 
I doubt much whether any hypothesis or theory in natural history of any value in fostering the 
progress of the science—and may it not be said, too, of other sciences of observation ?—was 
ever eliminated, otherwise than as a dim dream,—dimmer to its author often, than even to other 
men,—by any one not a practical worker in the field where he would raise his speculations ; 
not merely an occasional visitor, but a day-labourer in science. Goethe has been cited as an 
objection, but Goethe himself would have rejected with indignation the reputation of being a 
discoverer of laws in natural history, without having undergone a severe apprenticeship of 
practical study. The great poet who so clearly enunciated the morphology of the vegetable 
individual (unaware of the previous and clear, though premature as to time, announcement of 
the law by Linnzeus), and attempted to work out a like idea in the vertebrate skeleton, warmly 
contended that the doctrines he put forth were not sudden inspirations and lucky guesses, but 
the results of long continued and laborious study. The names which shine brightest in our 
science for their elucidation of its philosophy from the time of Aristotle to that of Linneus, 
* British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, No. I (1848). 
+ Loe. cit., p. 10. 
