OHIO STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



the investigation. And in biological research, to return to our text, 

 we must not forget for an instant that the organism is a fmictioii- 

 ing mechanism. We cannot hope to understand any animal or 

 plant or organ until we have an exhaustive knowledge of how 

 it works. The anatomical fact is - dead and inert unless if is 

 vivified not only by the "salt of morphological ideas" as it was so 

 happily phrased years ago, but also by the fresh warm blood of 

 functional explanations. 



Anatomy has given place, within the memory of even the 

 younger generation of biologists, to morphology, in which the 

 explanation is indissolubly linked with the fact. Nor can we stop 

 here. No anatomical fact is complete until its physiological sig- 

 nificance is added thereto. Like the old-time descriptive anatomist, 

 the "pure" morpliologist (or shall we dubb him "poor morpho- 

 logist?") has no longer any tenable standing ground. What I 

 mean is that anatomical structure cannot be understood as the 

 morphology of today demands that it must be understood without 

 a full knowledge of the functions of the parts, and we must know 

 evolution of function before we can have true knowledge of the 

 evolution of structure. And as a matter of fact the biological 

 public is just now coming into a practical realization of the truth 

 that we must have a comparative physiology ]!>arallel with our 

 comparative anatomy. It seems to us now very strange that we 

 have had to wait a whole century after the birth of comparative 

 anatomy for even the beginnings of a realization in practice of 

 this elementary principle. 



That researches in descriptive anatomy and in pure mor- 

 phology are still necessary and will continue to be called for to 

 the end of the age there can be no doubt ; but it is important that 

 we remember that no study of strucure is complete until the whole 

 significance of that structure (including the evolutionary history 

 of both its form and its function) is exposed and the whole com- 

 plex of fact and meaning not only woven together into a single 

 fabric, but fitted into the great pattern of reality as a whole in its 

 proper place. 



Now, no one of us can do this perfectly and, as time advances 

 and the totality of the known becomes ever more vast and intricate, 

 the difficulty grows apace. And yet this we must do in some 

 measure in so far as we hope to rank as real builders in the 

 permanent temple of truth; If we find ourselves unable to see the 

 whole edifice in its proper perspective (as indeed who can?) we 

 can at least build harmoniously with that nitch in which we find 

 ourselves. Let no man delude himself with the idea that he is 

 ])uilding for himself alone, that he builds on no other's foundation 



