118 THE PROGRESS OF SCTKXCK n 



sion of morphological facts, has undergone a 

 corresponding improvement. The breaks which 

 formerly separated our groups from one another, 

 as animals from plants, vertebrates from in- 

 vertebrates, cryptogams from phanerogams, have 

 either been filled up, or shown to have no 

 theoretical significance. The question of the 

 position of man, as an animal, has given rise to 

 much disputation, with the result of proving that 

 there is no anatomical or developmental character 

 by which he is more widely distinguished from the 

 group of animals most nearly allied to him, than 

 they are from one another. In fact, in this 

 particular, the classification of Linnaeus has been 

 proved to be more in accordance with the facts 

 than those of most of his successors. 



The study of man, as a genus and species of the 

 animal world, conducted with reference to no other 

 considerations than those which would be admit- 

 ted by the investigator of any other form of 

 animal life, has given rise to a special branch of 

 biology, known as Anthropology, which has grown 

 with great rapidity. Numerous societies devoted to 

 this portion of science have sprung up, and the 

 energy of its devotees has produced a copious 

 literature. The physical characters of the various 

 races of men have been studied with a minuteness 

 and accuracy heretofore unknown; and demon- 

 strative evidence of the existence of human con- 

 temporaries of the extinct animals of the latest 



