102 COMPARATIVE ANATOMY vin 



some of the most cherished notions of the founder of the 

 collection, an anatomical museum can scarcely do more in 

 teaching physiology than a collection of minerals can in 

 teaching chemistry. The physiologist should certainly be 

 well versed in the nature of the materials and organs by which 

 the functions of which he treats are carried on having, 

 indeed, need of all the help he can obtain from all quarters in 

 the solution of the difficult problems which come before him ; 

 but his science is, in the main, experimental. Whether it be 

 from the inherent difficulties that attend such inductions, or 

 from the hasty and illogical way in which they have often 

 been made, hitherto a large proportion of the attempts to 

 solve physiological inquiries by an appeal to morphology alone 

 have ended in failure, often of a mortifying character. We 

 still have to confess our ignorance of the purpose and applica- 

 tion of innumerable most obvious and striking modifications 

 of structure, which no amount of reasoning or guessing, with- 

 out actual observation on the living organism, seems able to 

 remove. I am speaking of physiology in the sense in which 

 the term is ordinarily restricted. There is a more general and 

 higher physiology, to which I shall refer presently, to elucidate 

 which morphology is one of the most essential aids. 



When morphology was first cultivated with anything like 

 scientific precision, views since called " teleological," exclusively 

 prevailed. Every animal was* looked upon as an isolated 

 machine ; every part of that animal was supposed to have 

 been formed expressly for carrying on the economy of that 

 particular species or individual in the most efficient manner, 

 without any reference to other species or individuals. If any- 

 thing further was looked for in anatomising an animal beyond 

 the mere gratification of curiosity or love of knowledge for its 

 own sake, it was direct adaptation to purpose. 



Many, indeed, are the curious speculations indulged in by 

 anatomists of this school, impelled, as they appear always to 

 have been, to find an immediate use for every modification of 

 form. In numerous instances these were mere conjectures, 

 which an enlarged knowledge of the habits and economy of 

 the animal treated of, or of kindred species, showed to be 

 fallacious. 



