July 4, 1878] 



NATURE 



257 



groove — a groove having precisely the same relations, 

 and in one part of its course being nearly as deep, as the 

 * medullary groove ' of a chick or a tadpole. He also 

 shows that the eyes are formed not, as is usually stated, 

 as elevations, but as depressions in the epiblast ; the cells 

 lining these depressions becoming connected with those 

 of the first ganglion of the nerve-cord. Here again is a 

 remarkable resemblance to vertebrates, in which the 

 organs of the higher senses always originate as involutions 

 of the surface-layer " (page 896). 



I have thus passed insensibly from the meaning to 

 the aims of morphology. I trust you will agree with 

 me that it is "a topmost fruitful bough" of the great 

 tree of modern science ; it is certainly fuller of buds than 

 of flowers, for now is its early spring only. Kindly attend 

 whilst I open a bud or two to show you what the flowers 

 promise to be. 



The ends and aims of morphology are different from 

 those oi physiology ; histology may be said to be equally 

 related to each and ancillary to both. The study of one 

 branch seems to ask in its workers for an innate fitness 

 for the one rather than for the other. One man sharply 

 questions the why of nature ; the other patiently searches 

 after the how. Morphology asks for one who can work 

 and wait in silence year after year ; and his qualities have 

 need to be those of quick insight, combined with the most 

 phlegmatic laboriousness. Here, in this case, natural 

 qualifications are of more importance than those which 

 can be acquired. But the physiologist sharply asking w,^^ 

 needs to be trained for his work ; he must be a mathe- 

 matician and a chemist as well as an anatomist ; ready 

 action and cunning inventiveness are most needed in 

 him; a seeing eye, a copying hand, and a somewhat 

 imaginative nature ; these are the qualifications asked 

 for in the morphologist. Delight in living forms and their 

 transformations shows itself very early in us all ; mor- 

 phology is cesthetic before it is scientific; it becomes scien- 

 tific as soon as it is comparative. The morphologist is 

 nothing if not comparative ; the development of accurate 

 observation, combined with ready and constant compari- 

 son and unconscious classification — these are the neces- 

 sary elements in the morphological worker. 



The group of animals to which we belong — the verte- 

 brata — considered as to their skeletal morphology, form 

 alone a wide field ; " there is yet much land to be pos- 

 sessed." In that division of a subdivided science I have 

 chosen for time and for work's sake mainly the head ; for 

 in it are to be found the most intricate interweavings, the 

 hardest knots of nature. For a time, for work' s sake, one 

 kind of head is enough ; if all the parts are to be consi- 

 dered in their origin and relations, in their changes and 

 development. For the solid and supporting parts of the 

 building, so to speak, are to no purpose, have no mean- 

 ing, if we could possibly forget their contents and their 

 outgoing and overlying parts. 



Considering the great complexity of structure in the 

 highest types, the mind casts about to see if there be no 

 similar forms of living creatures in which the structural 

 problems are simpler. As man does not stand alone, 

 but is merely — in respect of his lower nature — one of a 

 large series of living forms, something, surely, may be 

 learned of him, collaterally, and from below, by seeking 

 what may be seen in the types that come nearest to him. 

 Feeling our way down among the branches of the great 

 vertebrate life-tree, we come to forms somewhat simpler, 

 indeed, but formed on the whole on the same pattern, 

 and having on the whole the same mode of embryogeny, 

 and no real break occurs, even among living types, until 

 we have passed the lamprey and his companions. 

 Searching downwards, however, from any culminating 

 type of mammal, we shall come to no form directly under- 

 lying them until we are among aquatic creatures ; the 

 birds, lying over the reptiles, belong to another "leader" 

 in the life-tree. 



Do but consider what a manufactory, what a labo- 

 ratory, what a temple (if I may so speak) the head is ! 

 Yet it and all the body, of which it is the chief part, is 

 developed^vegetatively — its growth is as the growth of a 

 plant, but its architecture stains the pride of all the glory 

 of human skill. Man, not structurally only, but socially, 

 also, is both husbandry and a building. And as the 

 forces that bind the units of society together are the 

 same as those that perfect the individual as such ; so, 

 also, is it in that which enclothes man and brings him 

 into conscious relation to his fellows. The forces that 

 work in the elementary parts are the same as those that 

 work in the whole to make it one whole. The body is 

 compacted together by that which every cell, every tissue, 

 and every organ supplies ; " according to the effectual 

 working in the measure of every part " does it live, 

 grow, and build up itself, and perform its wondrous and 

 inimitable functions. 



For a century past the thinking mind has been-, 

 gradually trained to consider the earth, which is our tem- 

 porary home, as a development, as being in a state now 

 very different from that which it had at first, as having 

 undergone, not one, but a thousand changes. Every one, 

 now, knows that the earth did not "rise like an exhala- 

 tion," and immediately assume its present form, wear its 

 present robes, carry its present living forms ; but that, 

 during Eonian days — immeasurable secular periods — the 

 face of the earth has changed as much as the face of 

 a man changes during the "seven ages of his eventful 

 history." It will take some time to bring the mind face to 

 face with <;«r facts ; the thinkers as well as the unthinking 

 will be slow in parting with the old cherished idea of 

 the sudden apparition of a perfect man upon the earth, 

 and the more because this seems to be the teaching of the 

 most venerable records of history ; which, indeed, ought 

 to be sacred to us, if for no other reason than their un- 

 doubted antiquity. Those most venerable records have 

 not suffered now that we get a Pisgah-view of the earth' s 

 development ; they will not suffer from any doctrine of 

 the slow development of man. 



I had to speak of the aims of morphology; its highest 

 aims are to be able to read off the archaic writings in 

 which the members of man were in olden times written ; 

 to decipher the first promise and prophecy of his organic 

 life in its initial letters up to the characters that express 

 the form of the jointed worm, and to see the form of 

 the jointed worm exalted into the fulness of the form of 

 man. Yet we know of nothing but the sequences and 

 results of the morphological force; we know absolutely 

 as much of the nature of the human soul as of the 

 nature of protoplasm, and nothing of either. The mor- 

 phologist, as such, for the time, is like Gallio, he " careth 

 for none of these things ; " he refuses to be hindered with 

 side-questions, however grave and important ; his motto 

 is, "this one thing I do." His wor'K is to trace the germ 

 into the adult or germ-grower j to scale every stage and 

 step of a hving creature's life; to map out each form, 

 passing into succeeding forms, until the perfect form 

 appears. 



The ladder of man's life reaches up to the highest 

 heaven of organic beauty ; that of the horse, the ox, and 

 the lion stops far short of this height ; yet are they all 

 perfect after their kind. You will see at once that mail is 

 an animal plus something that has made it possible for him 

 to become " in form and moving so express and admir- 

 able ; the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals ! " 

 Prof. Flower will show you what a poor thing man is 

 when that which makes him man is arrested or sup- 

 pressed ; you will then "look on this picture and on this," 

 on man in his highest development; his outward form 

 corresponding to the power and excellence within ; and 

 on man undeveloped, brutal, foul in face, and fouler still 

 in life. 



W. K. Parkir 



