158 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



He holds that an Insect is worth investigating in itself, 



but still more for what it suggests of the greater truths 



of biological science. In the strict academic sense we 



recognise in Harvey the first comparative anatomist. 



He seizes every opportunity of illustrating his views, and 



stimulating his imagination, by reference to the viler 



creatures, as he calls them, and the beating of the heart 



of an Amphipod is not only interesting as such, but to 



him it throws a powerful light on the beating of the heart 



in man. He says: "Had anatomists only been as 



conversant with the dissection of the lower animals as 



they are with that of the human body, the matters that 



have hitherto kept them in a perplexity of doubt would, 



in my opinion, have met them freed from every kind of 



difficulty."* Nothing could be plainer. Here we have 



the whole practice and rationale of comparative anatomy 



divulged in the year 1628. 



Unfortunately the greater part of Harvey's 



researches on comparative anatomy, and they must have 



been considerable, were lost or destroyed in the unhappy 



tumults of the Civil War. He used to tell John Aubrey 



that of all the losses he had sustained no grief was so 



crucifying to him as the loss of these manuscripts, and, 



as it is, his published work contains new observations on 



sponges and zoophytes; bees, wasps, hornets and flies; 



mussels, snails, and slugs; crabs, shrimps, and crayfish; 



fishes, toads, frogs, serpents, tortoises and birds. 



Even his study in generation, based as it is largely on 



the chick, includes numerous acute and original 



references to other animals, and is thus the first essay 



in comparative embryology. 



* Willis's translation. " Veruntamen, si in dissectione animalium 

 aeque versati essent, ac in humani cadaveris anatome exercitati : Res 

 haec in dubio, quae ornues perplexos retinet, palam absque omni 

 difficultate mea sententia elucesceret." De Motu Cordis, first ed., 1628, 

 p. 33. 



