ANIMAL MORPHOLOGY IN ITS RELATION TO OTHER 



SCIENCES 



BY CHARLES BENEDICT DAVENPORT 



[Charles Benedict Davenport, Director of the Station for Experimental Evolution, 

 Carnegie Institution of Washington, b. June 1, 1866, Stamford, Connecticut. 

 S.B. Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, 1886; A.B. Harvard University, 1889; 

 Ph.D. ibid. 1892. Assistant in Zo6logy, Harvard University, 1887-91; In- 

 structor in Zoology, ibid. 1891-99; Assistant Professor of Zoology, University 

 of Chicago, 1899-1901; Associate Professor of Zoology, ibid. 1901-1904; 

 Director of the Biological Laboratory of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and 

 Sciences, since 1898. Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; 

 American Association for the Advancement of Science; Socie'te' Zoologique de 

 France; Allgemeine Entomologische Gesellschaft, etc. Author of Experimental 

 Morphology; Statistical Methods; and other works and monographs on zoology.] 



IN the system of classification adopted by the organizers of this 

 Congress the science of animal morphology is apparently to be 

 defined so as to exclude comparative anatomy. I take it, conse- 

 quently, that it is intended to include only the broader problems 

 connected with the form of animals, such as the phylogenetic 

 evolution of form, the embryological development of form, and the 

 restoration of the mutilated form, in general, the form-producing 

 and form-maintaining factors. 



Expressed in this way the relations of animal morphology become 

 more evident; and clearly the first and most intimate of these 

 relations is with the morphology of plants. The separation of animal 

 morphology from plant morphology in the department of biology, 

 while according with a division of the subject found to-day in 

 our universities, is, I think, not an ideal condition. For the form- 

 producing and the form-maintaining factors are, at bottom, the 

 same in all organisms. The problem of what factors have worked 

 to determine whether a fish or a man shall have such and such a 

 form is identical with that of the determination of the form of a fern 

 or an oak. Little by little the morphologists that deal with the 

 broader aspects of their science are being forced to face the absurd- 

 ity of its division on the basis of the material studied. In cytology 

 it is found that the maturation of the germ-cells, the fertilization of 

 the egg- and cell-divisions, are identical processes in the two "king- 

 doms." 1 To admit a plant cytology and an animal cytology is only 

 less absurd than to admit a mammalian cytology, an avian cytology, 

 and a reptilian cytology. 



What is true of cytology is true of the other branches of morpho- 



1 The most recent and best general work on cytology is that of E. B. Wilson, 

 The Cell in Development and Inheritance, 2d edition, New York, 1901. 



