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BEITISH ASSOCIATION FOE THE ADVANCEMENT OF 

 SCIENCE, SHEFFIELD, 1910. 



ADDEESS TO THE ZOOLOGICAL SECTION. 



By Professor G. C. Bourne, M.A., D.Sc, F.R.S., President of the Section. 



In choosing a subject for the address with which it is my duty, 

 as President of this Section, to trouble you, I have found myself in 

 no small embarrassment. As one whose business it is to lecture and 

 give instruction in the details of comparative anatomy, and whose 

 published work, qualecunque sit, has been indited on typical and, as 

 men would now say, old-fashioned morphological lines, I seem to 

 stand self-condemned as a morphologist. For morphology, if I read 

 the signs of the times aright, is no longer in favour in this country, 

 and among a section of the zoological world has almost fallen into 

 disgrace. At all events, I have been very frankly assured that this 

 is the case by a large proportion of the young gentlemen whom it 

 has been my fate to examine during the past two years ; and, as this 

 seems to be the opinion of the rising generation of English zoologists, 

 and as there are evident signs that their opinion is backed by an 

 influential section of their elders, I have thought that it might be of 

 some interest, and perhaps of some use, if I took this opportunity of 

 offering an apology for animal morphology. 



It is a sound rule to begin with a definition of terms, so I will 

 first try to give a short answer to the question, " What is morpho- 

 logy *? " and, when I have given a somewhat dogmatic answer, I will 

 try to deal in the course of this address with two further questions : 

 What has morphology done for zoological science in the past ? What 

 remains for morphology to do in the future ? 



To begin, with, then, what do we include under the term morpho- 

 logy ? I must, first of all, protest against the frequent assumption 

 that we are bound by the definitions of C. F. Wolff or Goethe, or 

 even of Haeckel, and that we may not enlarge the limits of morpho- 

 logical study beyond those laid down by the fathers of this branch 

 of our science. We are not— at all events, we should not be — bound 

 by authority, and we owe no allegiance other than what reason 

 commends to causes and principles enunciated by our predecessors, 

 however eminent they may have been. 



The term morphology, stripped of all the theoretical conceptions 

 that have clustered around it, means nothing more than the study 

 of form, and it is applicable to all branches of zoology in which the 

 relationships of animals are determined by reference to their form 

 and structure. Morphology, therefore, extends its sway not only 

 over the comparative anatomy of adult and recent animals, but also 

 over palaeontology, comparative embryology, systematic zoology and 

 cytology, for all these branches of our science are occupied with the 



