Likenesses; or, Philosophical Anatomy 269 



rotean matter into structures, the cross relations and 

 inities of which are too complex for the sharpest of human 

 )servers to unravel. Thus, time has brought about strange 



'Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regua.' 



I'rom the same professional chair whence Professor Owen, in 

 j.849, promulgated his views as to ' Philosophical Anatomy,' 

 Ls unwearied opponent, Professor Huxley, in 1870, gave out 

 turn his quasi-vertebral theory of the skull, followed four 

 years later by Professor Parker. Moreover, Professor Huxley 

 has not only eloquently proclaimed the complete compati- 

 bility of ' Teleology ' with ' Evolutionism,' but even the utter 

 impotence of the latter to weaken, in however small a degree, 

 the position of the teleologist. If such results are admitted 

 by those who are at once zealous evolutionists and eminent 

 advocates of the supreme importance of the study of develop- 

 ment, they may well be yet more apparent to those who, on 

 principle, deny that the study of development is the one key 

 whereby may be unlocked the mysteries of animal organisa- 

 tion. Useful, highly useful in its degree, as is the study of 

 development, its importance seems to us to have been of late 

 somewhat over-estimated. For, in the first place, it is mani- 

 fest that if our embryological researches be carried back as 

 far as possible, we shall not find in the incipient germ any 

 available characters at all, while at later stages diversities in 

 the interpretation of nascent structures are almost always 

 possible. In backboned animals, when the skull begins to 

 assume the consistence of cartilage, the meaning of the 

 initial changes of that process must be elucidated through 

 the changes which take place at subsequent stages. Thus- 

 Professor Huxley has lately^ testified, referring to the 

 development of the skull of the American gilled-eft Meno- 



1 See Proceedings of the Zoological Society for 1874, part ii. p. 199. 



