COMMENTS 



(1) Needham arbitrarily limited the contents of his 

 book absolutely to the history of chemical embryology. In 

 addition, his extreme unobjectivity drew attention, as he 

 dwelt mainly on the works of English authors, while, accord- 

 ing to his opinion, the book should have represented the 

 history of embryology of all times and peoples. In the 

 chronological table of scientists of the world embryology, 

 covering up to the beginning of the 20th century (p. 266 of 

 Russian translation) , Needham did not find places for the 

 names of N. A. Warnek, A. 0. Kovalevsky, I. I. Mechnikov 

 and their numerous Russian followers in contrast to 



Fr. Balfur, who published more than 70 years ago the first 

 (and for that time excellent) manual book on comparative 

 embryology, in which the Russian works were given proper 

 places (14) . 



(2) Samples of these "compositions" are pictured on 

 the prints of that time, reprinted in the book "Kunstkamera 

 Peterbergskoi Akademii Nauk", 1853, 293 p. (see Fig. 6.10 

 and 11 of the mentioned book) . Description of anatomical 

 and embryological "compositions of Ryuish and texts of the 

 poetical Latin inscriptions which accompanied them much 

 earlier were mentioned by Baer in "Memories about anatomical 

 cabinet" ("Memoire uber das Anatomische Kabinet, gelesen in 

 den Sitzungen der Phys.-math. Kl. d, Sep. 20, 4 u. Oct. 18, 

 1850; Collection the museum of anthropology and ethnography 

 in Imp. Ac. Sc, 1900, p. 111-152) (21). 



Here and below figures in round brackets show the number 

 of text page, to which the comment is related. 



599 



