ZOOLOGY SINCE DARWIN. 491 



On looking back, we see that in all the principal brandies of zoolog- 

 ical science the theory of descent founded by Darwin lias become the 

 leading motive of an investigating activity such as was unknown in 

 any former period. 



This activity is characterized by a preponderance of morphological 

 interests which has led to such an unjust neglect of physiology that 

 today, when it has become necessary to consider morphological 

 development in order to state problems whose solutions can only be 

 obtained by experiment, neither the working methods nor even the 

 workers are to be found who can solve such problems. 



Therefore, morphology, seeking for light, threatened to have recourse 

 to a new edition of Schelling-Oken's Natural Philosophy, since the new 

 way out of the difficulties was not yet staked out by sound experience. 



Although controlled by an exclusively morphological tendency 

 opposed to its own proper ends, zoology has begun to recognize as a 

 new branch of work the " causes of organic morphogeny," and Koux has 

 already founded a special journal 1 for it. But this name does not indi- 

 cate the entire scope of the effort, which would be much better char- 

 acterized as "comparative physiology" or "biomechanics." 2 



Darwinism has filled the old descriptive zoology with a philosophical 

 spirit, and given it a historical character; it now remains the duty of 

 the coining generation to so shape it that it will become a causal science, 

 resting upon an experimental basis. 



'ArcMv ffir Entwickelungsniecnanik, edited by W. Roux. Leipzig, 1894, et seq. 

 2 Y. Delage. Une science nouvelle: la Biomceanique. (Revue generale des 

 sciences pures et appliquees, 6 e annee, no. 10, Paris, 1895. 



