COMPARATIVE ANATOMY AND GENERAL BIOLOGY 327 



tivation of the various provinces of biology. Biology is indeed a 

 science, though only from the point of view of its fundamental 

 principles and ideas, not from the point of view of the materials 

 which it furnishes to be actually w r orked upon. One cannot be a 

 biologist practically, excepting through some of its subdivisions. 

 Now in my opinion there is no single sub-science of the whole bio- 

 logical realm that contains in itself so many of the elements fitted 

 for giving the biological point of view as comparative anatomy. 

 And it seems to me that particularly now, when so much import- 

 ance is rightly being placed on the experimental and statistical 

 methods of research, it needs to be strongly emphasized that as a 

 method or instrument of research it is the fact of comparison that 

 has given and ever must give anatomy its great significance. Right 

 here is one of the points at which my plea for catholicity comes 

 strongly to the front. Some workers in fields recently become 

 so full of promise and so enticing are actually assuring us, in the 

 morning glow of their day of promise, that the comparative method 

 is impotent, and that the future of biology is committed wholly to 

 these new methods! It is assuring, however, to note that a dis- 

 tinguished leader in one at least of the new schools does not hesitate 

 to condemn this sort of thing in harsher terms than I have felt like 

 using. 



I would especially mention the importance of comparative ana- 

 tomy in the preliminary training of medical students. If there be 

 any biologist above all others for whom the biological point of view 

 is of consequence to the general good, that one is the physician. 

 But if the physician is to attain this point of view, he must do it 

 by some other route than his strictly medical studies. It cannot 

 be reached by the study of any single kind of organism. In the 

 main, then, the preliminary training of the prospective medical 

 student must be relied on for gaining the desired end. This is not 

 the place to discuss the matter, but I have reached the conviction 

 that in the United States, at least, that part of the preliminary 

 training of medical students which pertains to the higher verte- 

 brates is, in a majority of our universities, defective. I believe we 

 are drilling on the single type, mammal, too exclusively, and to the 

 sacrifice of what would be practicable and of much greater value 

 in the comparative anatomy of higher vertebrates, the mammals 

 particularly. 



The place of comparative anatomy in biology that may stand 

 second in our presentation is that of its significance for systematic 

 zoology; or, in the restricted way in which I shall be obliged to 

 treat this head, its significance for determining affinities of the 

 larger groups of animals. There can be no doubt that some of the 

 most important, though at the same time most difficult, of biological 



