90 R. W. SHUFELDT. 



thrown on organic function, on therapeutics, and on surgery. 

 Many of their observations were crude and erroneous, and, while 

 the element of crudeness has, among the best of modern writers, 

 been almost completely eliminated, we do, some of us, still 

 make mistakes. 



Later on in the history of scientific research, where animal 

 morphology was concerned, the investigations became more 

 certain, and many were undertaken solely for the purpose of 

 making contributions to knowledge, apart from any utilitarian 

 ends. Still the human anatomist eagerly seized upon the results, 

 and utilized I hem, as far as possible, in demonstrating the struc- 

 ture and physiology of our own species. Then, comparatively 

 within recent time, there gradually grew up the important 

 science of taxonomy — the classification of living and extinct 

 forms — based upon their actual affinities and relationships in 

 all the great classes of organic life. Comparative anatomy, as 

 a whole, came to be indispensable here, and comparative osteo- 

 logy one of the most vital subjects to the biological sciences. 

 Skeletons of the Vertebrata were being studied by scores of 

 researchers in all parts of the civilized globe. As one result of 

 all this, human anatomy came to be comprehended scientifically 

 as it never had been at any previous age. 



Then came into the field, and to our infinite assistance, the 

 knowledge of organic evolution, and a most powerful light was 

 flashed upon the entire subject of the development of hving, 

 existing nature, the interrelations of forms, and, through the 

 material of palaeontology, as far as it has come into the pos- 

 session of science, the origin and ancestry of all creatures that 

 have ever inhabited the earth. In all this, comparative osteo- 

 logy came to be of more and more importance, and, in addition 

 to what was being accomplished in other fields of biology, ana- 

 tomists were very active in publishing work on comparative 

 osteology. Skeletons of a great variety of species of fishes^ 

 reptiles, birds and mammals from nearly every region where 



