283 OWEN'S POSITION IN 



the obvious conclusion as to their ' unity of orga- 

 nisation.' A child may see that skull ' answers ' to 

 skull ; spinal column to spinal column ; ribs to 

 ribs ; breast bone to breast bone ; wings to arms ; 

 and legs to legs, in the two. Later on, Peter 

 Camper, a capital artist as well as an accom- 

 plished anatomist, was in the habit of amusing, 

 while he instructed, his class by showing what 

 slight strokes of his chalk sufficed to turn the 

 outline skeleton of a man into that of a dog or of 

 an ox ; and how these could be metamorphosed 

 into reptilian or fish forms, without disturbance of 

 their fundamental features. 



The cultivator of botany, who went beyond 

 the classification of ' hay,' became familiar with 

 facts of the same order. Indeed, flowering plants 

 fairly thrust morphological ideas upon the ob- 

 server. Flowers are the primers of the morpho- 

 logist ; those who run may read in them uniformity 

 of type amidst endless diversity, singleness of 

 plan with complex multiplicity of detail. As a 

 musician might say, every natural group of 

 flowering plants is a sort of visible fugue, wan- 

 dering about a central theme which is never 

 forsaken, however it may, momentarily, cease to 

 be apparent. 



Vicq d'Azyr, following the line of strict ana- 

 tomical observation and critical comparison, set 

 forth the correspondences of plan observable in 

 the limbs of the higher vertebrates, and may be 



