220 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANATOMICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL 



tions, and did not deal with the various degrees of development of the 

 ear as found in normal races. 



In the Festschrift, published to celebrate the attainment by Vir- 

 chow of his seventieth year in 1892, Schwalbe codified the inquiries 

 he had made into the morphology of the external ear, and provided a 

 sure basis for others to build on. The features of the ear which 

 Schwalbe laid most stress on were the auricular tip (Darwin's point) 

 and the proportions of its measurements. Exact measurements have 

 this one supreme advantage that they are definite facts, which can be 

 added to, verified and compared by workers all the world over ; they 

 are not expressions of opinion or indefinite expressions of fact, which 

 are useless to other observers ; measurements must ever constitute 

 the firm basis on which every department of knowledge is to be reared. 

 But the method I sought for was one that could be applied in the 

 street and to large numbers, and yet would lead to the accumulation 

 of facts which could be used by other observers, and for this purpose 

 actual measurements were out of the question ; further the relative 

 diameters of any structure is one of the least essential of its features ; 

 the method desired was one which would record not only the form of 

 the organ as a whole, but also the form and arrangement of the in- 

 dividual parts. 



But what were the individual parts of the ear ; how could they 

 be determined ? I accepted embryology as my chief guide and took 

 each one of the six tubercles or elevations which His ' had described as 

 entering into the formation of the external ear, as a definite element 

 to be studied and recorded. Fortunately I had studied the ears 

 in many forms of primates, and, as will be seen presently, the ex- 

 perience so obtained also influenced my method. But were I now 

 to begin again I do not think that embryology would be my chief 

 guide ; rather 1 would found the basis of my method on principles 

 established by observations on the ears of the lower primates, espe- 

 cially on the lower forms of monkeys found in the New World. 



1 !>/< I'l'i-mentwickelnng des t'iusseres Ohr : Anatomie Menschlicher Embryonen, 

 Theil iii., Leipzig, 1885. 



