146 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



antecedent to the period of evolution — and one could 

 quote many others — we have the origin and practice of 

 a method which was to exercise the genius of a Cuvier 

 and a Johannes Muller. 



1. Belon in 1555 compares the skeleton of a man 

 in some detail with that of a bird. Apart from a natural 

 failure to identify the clavicle of the bird, and the conse- 

 quent misinterpretation of the coracoid, together with 

 some hesitation for which the elongated metacarpus is 

 responsible, his comparison is correct at every point. 

 The confusion of the radius and ulna in the figure is an 

 engraver's error, since the text on this point is quite 

 sound. In the leg of the bird, where we should have 

 expected him to go badly astray, in the absence of any 

 knowledge of its development, he only commits the 

 venial error of mis-stating the extent of the tarsus, whilst 

 he adroitly avoids the pitfall of comparing the tarsal 

 joint with the knee, and of regarding the tarso- 

 metatarsus as a new element. The bones of the bird, 

 he tells us, approach those of other animals more closely 

 than a casual inspection at first suggests. 



2. Nehemiah Grew in 1681 compares the cham- 

 bered stomach of the sheep with the stomach of man. 

 He says: "The fourth venter is called Abomasus : by 

 butchers, the Read. The only analogous one to that in 

 a man." 



That the early anatomists themselves understood and 

 valued the method is abundantly clear. Again I might 

 quote numerous instances, but four must suffice. 



1. Malpighi in 1666 contrasts the state of anatomy 

 in his own time with the knowledge of the ancients, and 

 attributes the superior genius of contemporary anatomy 

 to the investigation of the Invertebrate and lower 

 Vertebrate animals, as opposed to the practice of the 



