vii ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS 85 



I will pass next to the section of the museum which is, 

 perhaps, altogether the most characteristic, and is certainly 

 the most eminently Hunterian. It was specially the creation 

 of the founder, is still arranged almost exactly as he left it, 

 and, notwithstanding the very numerous additions, still con- 

 tains a larger proportion of Hunterian specimens than any 

 other department. This is the collection which is called 

 Physiological, because the specimens in it are classified mainly 

 according to their supposed function. Physiology, as we 

 know it now, is scarcely a subject which can be illustrated 

 in a museum. The processes and actions which take place 

 in the living body are not to be shown in bottles, but the 

 organs, through the medium of which physiological processes 

 are performed, can be, and it is these which are illustrated in 

 this collection. It is more truly a collection of comparative 

 anatomy, or morphology as we should now call it. It shows 

 the variations in form which the different organs undergo 

 either in different species, or in the same species under 

 different conditions, as age and sex or season. Many of these 

 modifications clearly have relation to function, as we see in 

 the difference of form and relative size of the compartments 

 of the stomach of the young ruminant, which is nourished 

 by milk, and the adult which feeds on grass, the periodic 

 variations in the size of the testis in birds, etc. But in a 

 vast number more we can see no special adaptation to 

 purpose, but merely variation, apparently for variety's sake. 

 Look, for instance, -at all the differences of the form of the 

 liver throughout the mammalian series, which, as far as we 

 know, have no relation to its action as a secreting gland. 

 Though of little interest to the physiologist, modifications of 

 this kind are of the highest importance to the morphologist. 

 They throw light upon one of the great biological problems, 

 classification, which, when rightly interpreted, means nothing 

 more or less than a statement of the order in which living 

 beings have been evolved one from another. From such 

 variations of form most precious indications of the relation- 

 ship of one animal to another can be obtained, and the less 

 these variations are related to adaptation to some particular 

 function, the better they can be relied on for this purpose, 



