HIS AND GOETTE. 65 



views in a very learned form, and under the banner of a 

 new and very exact mathematical and physical method, he 

 has recently expressed the same views in a general form in 

 his book on " Our Body and the Physiological Problem of 

 its Origin" (Leipsic, 1875). As His, in order to increase 

 the circulation of the latter book, has allowed it to be 

 publicly advertised as " important to readers of Haeckel's 

 Anthropogenie," I shall only remark that my treatise on 

 " The Aims and Methods of the History of Evolution " 

 (Jena, 1875) frees me from the necessity of further answer. 

 To the most important points in his false theories I shall 

 refer again. (See Chapter XXIV.) 



Quite recently, however, His and Reichert's books on 

 Ontogeny, which had previously ranked as the most per- 

 verted and unfortunate of the larger works on this science, 

 have been far eclipsed, in that respect, by a ponderous work 

 by Alexander Goette, of Strasburg, on the " History of the 

 Evolution of Bombinator igneus, as the Basis of a Com- 

 parative Morphology of Vertebrates " (Leipsic, 1875). This 

 monograph is the biggest existing contribution to the 

 literature of Ontogeny — a thick volume of 964 pages, ac- 

 companied by a very beautiful folio atlas of 22 plates. 

 These splendid plates, containing as many as 382 accurate 

 and very carefully executed drawings, representing the 

 history of the development of the Bombinator, are the 

 result of years of incessant labour, and excite a most 

 favourable interest in the huge work. Unfortunately, 

 however, the reader who is induced by this splendid 

 picture-book to expect a corresponding degree of excellence 

 in the voluminous text, will be sadly disappointed. Not 

 only is the whole account most obscure, confused, and 



