360 THE HISTORY AND SCOPE OF ZOOLOGY IX 



John Hunter (1728-1793) is the most striking 

 figure of this epoch in the relation of medicine to 

 general zoological progress ; his museum, preserved 

 in Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, by the combined 

 action of the state and the Koyal College of Sur- 

 geons, is an abiding record of the historical progress 

 of biological science. Hunter collected, dissected, 

 and described not only higher but lower animals, with 

 the view of arriving at a knowledge of the function 

 of organs by the most extensive and systematic survey 

 of their modifications in all kinds of animals. His 

 purpose was that of the physiologist and medical man, 

 but he made great contributions to the general know- 

 ledge of animal structure. The same class of investi- 

 gations, when taken up by Cuvier from the point of 

 view of systematic Zoology and Morphology, led to a 

 reconstruction of classification and laid the foundation 

 of anatomical Zoology. Hunter was the younger 

 brother of William Hunter, who also formed an im- 

 portant museum, still preserved in Glasgow. Hunter 

 classified the organs of animals into those which sub- 

 serve the preservation of the individual, those which 

 subserve the preservation of the species, and those 

 which are the means of relation with the outer world, 

 and he arranged his museum of dissections and pre- 

 parations on this plan. 



The great progress of chemistry at the end of the 

 eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century 

 was followed by an application of chemical laws and 

 chemical methods to the study of animal life. Curi- 

 ously enough, as showing how deeply interwoven are 



