198 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
see that an anatomist can do as much, indeed I would even say 
he can do more for the advancement of his science by prose- 
cuting investigations in comparative anatomy and embryology 
than by confining his attention to man alone. Why should the 
anatomist, endeavoring to unravel the mystery of the structure 
of the most complicated organism known to him, waste his time 
and energy in studying that organism alone, when he can trace 
step by step the gradual increase of the complexity in the lower 
forms of life, and, by learning to understand the simpler con- 
ditions, place himself in a position to understand the final 
complexity ? 
More than one hundred years ago the Abbé Dicquemare 
wrote: “Everything that relates to animals, their manner of 
being, the growth and diminutions which they show, their gen- 
eration, their strength, their actions, their diseases, their nour- 
ishment, the duration of their lives, the phenomena which they 
manifest even in death, all these are subjects which ought to 
interest man. If his moral being does not offer any analogy to 
theirs, his physical constitution permits comparisons.” The new 
anatomy is interested in all these subjects; it is catholic in its 
extent. From amoeba to man every organism falls within the 
jurisdiction of the anatomist, and there is no problem of mor- 
phology but is his for solution, no observation however insigni- 
ficant but is his for application. “ Neque enim ad agendum et 
potestatem sive operationem humanam amplificandam sufficit, 
aut magnopere attinet, nosse ex quibus res constent, si modus 
et vias mutationum et transformationum ignores.” These words 
of Lord Bacon would well serve as a motto for the anatomy of 
to-day. 
