310 Anniversary Meeting. 



Gegenbaur was born in 1826, and a few weeks ago his 70th birthday 

 was celebrated by his pupils (who comprise almost all the leading 

 comparative anatomists of Germany, Holland, and Scandinavia) by 

 the presentation to him of a " Festschrift " in three volumes. Gegen- 

 baur is everywhere recognised as the anatomist who has laid the 

 foundations of modern comparative anatomy on the lines of the 

 theory of descent, and has to a very large extent raised the building 

 by his own work. His ' Grundziige der vergleichenden Anatomie ' 

 was first published in 1859, when he was 33 years old. In the second 

 edition, published in 1870, he remodelled the whole work, making 

 the theory of descent the guiding principle of his treatment of the 

 subject. Since then he has produced a somewhat condensed edition 

 of the same work under the title of ' Grundriss ' (translated into 

 English and French), and now, in his 71st year, he is about to 

 publish what will probably be the last edition of this masterly 

 treatise, revising the whole mass of facts and speculations accumu- 

 lated through his own unceasing industry and the researches of his 

 numerous pupils during the past quarter of a century. 



Gegenbaur may be considered as occupying a position in morph- 

 ology parallel to that occupied by Ludwig in Physiology. Both were 

 pupils of Jahannes Miiller, and have provided Europe with a body of 

 teachers and investigators, carrying forward in a third generation 

 the methods and aims of the great Berlin professor. Gegenbaur's 

 first independent contribution to science was published in 1853. It 

 was the outcome of a sojourn at Messina in 1852, in company with 

 two other pupils of Johannes Miiller, namely Albert Kolliker (still 

 professor in Wiirzburg) and Heinrich Miiller, who died not long 

 afterwards. These young morphologists published the results of 

 their researches in common. Gegenbaur wrote on Medusae, on the 

 development of Echinoderms, and on Pteropod larvae. A long list 

 of papers on the structure and development of Hydrozoa, Mollusca, 

 and various invertebrata followed this first publication. The greatest 

 interest, however, was excited among anatomists by his researches on 

 the vertebrate skeleton (commenced already in 1849 with a research, 

 in common with Friedreich, on the skull of axolotl). In a series of 

 beautifully illustrated memoirs he dealt with and added immensely 

 to our knowledge of the vertebral column, the skull, and the limb- 

 girdles and limbs of Vertebrata, basing his theoretical views as to 

 the gradual evolution of these structures in the ascending series of 

 vertebrate forms upon the study of the cartilaginous skeleton of 

 Elasmobranch fishes, and on the embryological characters of the 

 cartilaginous skeleton and its gradual replacement by bone in higher 

 forms. His method and point of view were essentially similar to 

 those of Huxley, who independently and contemporaneously was 

 engaged on the same line of work. 



