487 



CHAPTER VII. 

 PROGRESS OF ANIMAL MORPHOLOGY. 



Sect. 1. Rise of Comparative Anatomy. 



THE most general and constant relations of the 

 form of the organs, both in plants and animals, 

 are the most natural grounds of classification. 

 Hence the first scientific classifications of animals 

 are the first steps in animal morphology. At first, 

 a zoology was constructed by arranging animals, as 

 plants were at first arranged, according to their 

 external parts. But in the course of the researches 

 of the anatomists of the seventeenth century, it was 

 seen that the internal structure of animals offered 

 resemblances and transitions of a far more cohe- 

 rent and philosophical kind, and the science of 

 comparative anatomy rose into favour and import- 

 ance. Among the main cultivators of this science 1 

 at the period just mentioned, we find Francis Redi, 

 of Arezzo; Guichard-Joseph Duvernay, who was 

 for sixty years professor of anatomy at the Jardin 

 du Roi at Paris, and during this lapse of time had 

 for his pupils almost all the greatest anatomists of 

 the greater part of the eighteenth century ; Nehe- 

 miah Grew, secretary to the Royal Society of 



1 Cuv. Lemons sur I'Hist. des Sc. Nat. 414, 420. 



