COMPARATIVE ANATOMY AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF 



MORPHOLOGY 



BY YVES DELAGE 

 (Translated from the French by Robert M. Yerkes, Harvard University) 



[Yves Delage, Member of the French Institute, Professor of Comparative Zoology, 

 Anatomy, and Physiology, University of Paris (Sorbonne), since 1889; Director 

 of the Maritime Zoologic Station at Roscoff . b. Avignon, France, May 13, 1854. 

 M.D. Faculty of Paris, 1880; N.S.D. ibid. 1881; Officer of Academy, 1883; 

 Officer of Public Instruction, 1889; Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, 1894; 

 Laureate of the French Institute, Grand Prize in Physical Sciences, 1881; 

 Laureate of the Anthropological Society of Paris, Broca Prize, 1898. Tutor 

 at the Lyceum of La Rochelle, 1874; Instructor of Zoology at the Faculty of 

 Sciences of Paris, 1878; Master of Conferences, ibid. 1882; Professor of the 

 Faculty of Sciences of Caen, and Director of the Maritime Zoologic Station at 

 Luc-sur-mer, 1883; Member of Geneva Institute; Imperial Society of Natural- 

 ists of Moscow; Imperial Academy of Medicine, St. Petersburg; President of the 

 Zoological Society of France; British Council for the Advancement of Science, 

 Imperial Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg; Imperial Society of Naturalists, 

 St. Petersburg; Royal Society of Microscopy of London. Author of The Struc- 

 ture of Protoplasm and the Theories on Heredity and the Great Problems of 

 General Biology; Treatise on Concrete Zoology, with E. Herouard; The Biologic 

 Year : An Annual Account of the Labors in General Biology (one volume a year 

 since 1897).] 



LIKE those of nearly all branches of knowledge, the first rudi- 

 ments of comparative anatomy are as old as man himself. Ever 

 since he has been able to reflect and observe, even before he knew 

 how to speak, man has carried on the study of the majority of the 

 sciences or of their applications. He studied astronomy the day 

 he noticed that the sun rose each morning at a point on the horizon 

 and that it set each night at an opposite point, and that he could 

 expect the repetition on following days of the same phenomenon; 

 he studied arithmetic as soon as he could count the warriors of his 

 tribe and the sheep of his flock; geometry when he could draw the 

 boundary of a circle by means of a cord attached to a stake; phy- 

 sics when he succeeded in lighting a fire by striking two flints or 

 by rubbing together two pieces of wood; chemistry, and of the 

 most delicate kind, the first time he raised bread-dough with sour 

 dough of the preceding day. In the same way he began compara- 

 tive anatomy when he gave the same name to similar parts of differ- 

 ent beings, when he called the extremities of the horse as well as 

 of the dog, "feet." All the general terms of anatomy, such as head, 

 tail, horns, hair, liver, heart, etc., have for their preliminary con- 

 dition data of comparative anatomy, defaced and intuitive if you 

 please, but clear and positive nevertheless. 



This kind of rudimentary comparative anatomy, which has for 

 its basis a collection of resemblances of such a nature, recognizable 



