COMPARATIVE ANATOMY AND MORPHOLOGY 355 



diversify points of view, enlarge conceptions, coordinate information, 

 in order to reduce to a small number of essential propositions the 

 multitudes of scattered facts to which it gives a significance and 

 which it causes to converge toward general principles, in order to 

 permit unexpected and suggestive groupings, to show the chief bear- 

 ing of ideas which seem commonplace or of resemblances appar- 

 ently insignificant. 



As a science explanatory of biological phenomena, it furnishes its 

 share of ideas and facts, but it is not armed properly to solve pro- 

 blems, and allows itself to be distanced by experimental researches in 

 cytology upon the sexual elements, in fecundation, parthenogenesis, 

 ontogenesis, teratogenesis, the action of agents of every kind upon 

 living beings in the diverse conditions of their biology, in heredity, 

 variation, the acquisition of specific characters, and in the nervous 

 functions, from the most elementary sensations up to instinct and to 

 the highest manifestations of intelligence. 



In certain works on paleontology the importance of diverse beings 

 or groups of beings at different epochs is represented by the varying 

 width of a band which traverses the successive stages of the geo- 

 logical epochs. If we should do the same in order to represent the 

 relative importance of comparative anatomy in the different epochs 

 of our history, we should have to figure it as a line of extreme thin- 

 ness traversing the ancient epochs, suddenly becoming very large 

 at the beginning of the last century, and retaining even to our day 

 a respectable amplitude, which, however, does not seem destined to 

 increase indefinitely in the future. 



Experimental researches in biology meanwhile would take the 

 form of a triangular band whose summit would be turned down 

 towards the past epochs, while the base, growing larger and larger, 

 will without doubt continue to enlarge during a length of time im- 

 possible to foresee and perhaps unlimited. 



