Animal Morphology. 29 



Articulate, and Radiate); but perhaps his greatest contri- 

 bution to morphology was his conception of the corre- 

 lation of parts. 



This fruitful idea is the morphological aspect of the 

 unity of the organism. It suggests that an organism is 

 not a hap-hazard aggregate of characters, but a unified 

 integrate. Part is bound to part, so that if the one 

 varies the other varies with it. In short, "there are 

 many members which are members one of another, in 

 one body". An animal with a cud-chewing habit or 

 ruminant stomach has always "a cloven hoof"; the 

 presence of gills implies the absence of the foetal mem- 

 brane known as the allantois. To Cuvier's mind the 

 "correlation of parts" was simply a morphological fact; 

 to us it suggests two ideas: that related forms have 

 sprung from a common stock, and that the characters 

 of each organism are unified in some unknown way in 

 the constitution of the fertilized ovum, and in the pro- 

 gress of its development. 



There is no doubt, moreover, that Cuvier exaggerated 

 the truth of his guiding principle. In his famous 

 Discourse on the Revolutions of the Surface of the 

 Globe (1812-1813) he says, "a claw, a shoulder-blade, 

 a condyle, a leg or arm bone, or any other bone sepa- 

 rately considered, enables us to discover the description 

 of teeth to which they have belonged; so also, recipro- 

 cally, we may determine the form of the other bones 

 from the teeth. Thus, commencing our investigation 

 by a careful survey of any one bone by itself, a person 

 who is sufficiently master of the laws of organic struc- 

 ture may, as it were, reconstruct the whole animal to 

 which that bone had belonged." There is no living 

 morphologist who would accept so exaggerated a state- 

 ment. 



To understand Cuvier's stern opposition to theoretical 

 speculation, and his insistence on the fundamental im- 

 portance of anatomical analysis, we must C uvier's 

 remember the saturating influence of the Contem- 

 " Naturphilosophie" of Schelling and his poraries ' 

 school, with all its vague ideas as to the unity of nature 

 and Platonic archetypes. With this transcendental 



