WHERE WE STAND IN COMPARATIVE OSTEOLOGY. 91 



man had explored, were collected and duly described. This 

 material represents both living and extinct forms, and, as the 

 descriptive matter came to be published, many departments of 

 science experienced immediate benefit from the results. Man 

 no longer was regarded by the intelligent as the "lord of crea- 

 tion" with a special organization, but as an ordinary mammal, 

 representing a family of a well-defined group, that, in the case 

 of the most exalted races, had come to his ascendency through 

 the marvelous development of his nervous system and mentality. 



(Comparative osteology was, as a science, cultivated princi- 

 pally by those who were more or less directly connected with 

 museums and allied institutions, and, occasionally, by indepen- 

 dent researchers. Going back no further into history than the 

 last century and a half, we are to note, that the civilized na- 

 tions of the world, taken as a whole, produced quite an army 

 of such workers, and the learned societies and publishers of 

 scientific books turned out the results with commendable regu- 

 larity. 



But the material, during that decade, was not particularly 

 abundant; and, in hundreds of cases, animal forms were some- 

 times represented in collections of skeletons of vertebrates by 

 only a single skeleton, or even the part of one. Often there 

 was but a single skull; the sex of the specimen was not always 

 known; and the material was rarely in sufficient quantity or 

 series to safely explain specific variations due to age, or depar- 

 tures to be observed in the skeletons of allied species. 



However, with great eagerness, but not with undue haste, 

 the work went on, and memoirs and monographs of great credit 

 annually appeared, and, as these accumulated in the libraries, 

 they furnished the necessary infoi'mation for the production of 

 books in the different branches of comparative osteology, and 

 these, in due course, likewise appeared. 



But as the memoii-s were frequently based upon the exami- 

 nation of an insufficient amount of material, this defect onlv 



