148 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



himself to the same expression. In 1675 Nicholas 

 Hoboken uses the expression " anatomia comparata " in 

 his work on the anatomy of the seal, and earlier still, in 

 1672, it is employed by Thomas Willis in his treatise on 

 the Soul of Brutes. It is curiously difficult to be certain 

 on a point such as this ; but I imagine that Walter 

 Charleton, in the first edition of the Onomasticon Zoicon, 

 published in 1668, was the first to distinguish 

 "Anatomia coniparativa " as a branch of Biology. 



III. 



This is neither the time nor the occasion to explore 

 the work of the ancients. Aristotle has been sufficiently 

 expounded, and we can only hope that Galen will soon 

 achieve an English commentator and an English dress. 

 That his work is partly, if not largely, comparative does 

 not require for its demonstration the methods of the 

 higher criticism. When he says that the lower jaw is in 

 two halves, that there is a separate premaxilla, that there 

 are eight segments in the sternum, that the transverse 

 processes of the lumbar vertebra are directed forwards, 

 that the sacrum and coccyx have three pieces each, and 

 that the femur is curved, he is not describing the 

 anatomy of man. His apologists in the sixteenth 

 century exhausted all the resources of desperation in his 

 defence as a human anatomist, and it was seriously 

 claimed by Sylvius that the structure of the human body 

 had changed since the time of Galen. The explanation 

 of this assumed change was itself eagerly debated, and 

 it is difficult to acquit the Galenists of levity in ascribing 

 the straight femur of man to the substitution for the 

 airy freedom of the toga of the cylindrical garments of a 

 later age. 



But it must not be concluded that the outstanding 



