284 ANIMAL MORPHOLOGY 



at hand structural data of great diversity and in great abundance, awaiting a 

 new interpretation. They took the "natural system" of the old comparative 

 anatomists, and breathed into it the breath of life. In so far as it was natural its 

 naturalness lay not in association of like forms, but in kinship. Homology came 

 to have a new significance, and phylogeny and ontogeny came to the fore; and 

 enormously productive researches began into the correspondence in development 

 of race and individuals. It is not too much to claim that the general and prompt 

 acceptance of the idea of evolution is due primarily to the work of morphologists. 

 That which belongs to general intellectual culture of the race belongs to the 

 curricula of the schools. Among the early morphologists were some eminent edu- 

 cators, who were not slow to recognize the great pedagogic value of the materials 

 in their hands. They were the first among zoologists to reduce their materials to 

 satisfactory pedagogic form. While perhaps they did not create the laboratory 

 method in zoology, they made it general. While other phases of zoology are likely 

 to receive, and are worthy of more attention than they receive at present, the 

 materials of morphology will always be of the highest general pedagogic value 

 because they so well illustrate the commoner phenomena of evolution, division of 

 labor, specialization, progressive and retrogressive development, redundancy and 

 reduction of parts, parallelisms and divergent lines of development, etc. To me 

 it seems doubtful if these phenomena, which belong to evolution in every field of 

 knowledge, are demonstrable in any other field with such definiteness and economy 

 of time and satisfaction as in this one. Therein lies the chief pedagogic utility of 

 the materials of morphology. 



