864 BTOLOaiCAL TRAINING AND STUDIES. 



stimulus, not thither but thence, to the medulla oblongata, which 

 stimulus is then radiated downwards by a route formed distally by the 

 splanchnic nerve, so as to produce inhibitory vascular dilatation in 

 the neighbourhood of the peptic cells, as worthy of attention ^. 



A considerable number of the papers which will be read before 

 this Section, indeed a considerable part of the Section itself, will be 

 devoted to the Natural History of man. Nothing, I apprehend, is more 

 distinctive of the present phase of that 'proper study of mankind' 

 than the now accomplished formation of a close alliance between the 

 students of archaeology strict and proper and the biologist with the 

 express purpose of jointly occupying and cultivating that vast terri- 

 tory. Literature and art and the products of the arts furnish each their 

 data to the ethnologist and anthropologist in addition to those which 

 it is the business of the anatomist, the physiologist, the palaeontolo- 

 gist, and the physical geographer to be acquainted with; nor can any 

 conclusion attained to by following up any single one of those lines of 

 investigation be considered as definitely absolved from the condition 

 of the provisional until it has been shown that it can never be put 

 into opposition with any conclusion legitimately arrived at along 

 any other of the routes specified. In political alliances the short- 

 comings of one party necessarily hamper and check the advance 

 of the other ; a failure in the means or in the perseverance of 

 one party may bring the joint enterprise to a premature close; 

 mutual forbearance, not to dwell longer upon extreme cases, may 

 finally be as effectual in slackening progress as even mutual 

 jealousies. No such disadvantages attach themselves to the alliance 

 of literature with science, as the German 'Archiv fiir Anthro- 

 pologic/ issued to the world under the joint management of Ecker 

 the biologist and Lindenschmit the antiquary, will show any one 

 who consults its pages, replete with many-sided but not superficial, 

 multifarious but never inaccurate, information. 



The antiquary is a little prone, if he will allow me to say so, 

 when left alone, to make himself but a connoisseur; the historian, 

 whilst striving to avoid the Scylla of judicial dulness, slides into 

 the Charybdis of political partisanship ; and the biologist not rarely 



^ Since writing as above I have seen, but have not read, a paper by Dr. Coats in 

 Ludwig's 'Arbeiten aus der physiologischen Anstalt zu Leipzig' for 1870 which would 

 seem to treat of this subject. The Wiirzburg Physiological Laboratory Reports for 

 1867-68 contain, as is well known, a series of papers upon it. 



