PROGRESS OF ANIMAL MORPHOLOGY. 489 



studies had fixed in the minds of naturalists the 

 conviction of the possibility and the propriety -^f 

 considering large divisions of the animal kingdom 

 as modifications of one common type. Belon, as 

 early as 1555, had placed the skeleton of a man 

 and of a bird side by side, and shown the corre- 

 spondence of parts. So far as the case of verte- 

 brated animals extends, this correspondence is, 

 generally allowed; although it required some in- 

 genuity to detect its details in some cases ; for 

 instance, to see the analogy of parts between the 

 head of a man and of a fish. 



In tracing these less obvious correspondencies, 

 some curious steps have been made in recent times. 

 And here we must, I conceive, again ascribe no 

 small merit to the same remarkable man who, as 

 we have already had to point out, gave so great an 

 impulse to vegetable morphology. Gothe, whose 

 talent and disposition for speculating on all parts 

 of nature were truly admirable, was excited to the. 

 study of anatomy by his propinquity to the Duke of 

 Weimar's cabinet of natural history. In 1786, he 

 published a little essay, the object of which was to 

 show that in man, as well as in beasts, the upper 

 jaw contains an intermaxillary bone, although the 

 sutures are obliterated. After 1790 4 , animated and 

 impelled by the same passion for natural observa- 

 tion and for general views which had produced his 

 metamorphosis of plants, he pursued his specula- 



4 Zur Morphologic, i. 234. 



