206 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. LI 



Precocity and productiveness have gone hand in hand 

 among the few anatomists who have exhibited these in- 

 teresting traits; yet it is only fair to state that pro- 

 ductivity has not been dependent on precocity. Such men 

 as Bichat, Balfour, Haller. Vesalius, Johannes Mueller, 

 Bernard Siegfried Albinus, Pollard, Sir Charles Bell, 

 are rather unusual examples of precocity. 



It may be of interest to give a few detailed accounts of 

 some of these men. During the short period of seven 

 years, beginning his career at the age of twenty-three, 

 which Marie Frangois Xavier Bichat (known as the father 

 of histology) devoted to his scientific studies, he came to 

 be recognized as one of the foremost biologists of all time. 

 He exhibited unusual talents for prolonged and intense 

 application to the pursuit of his favorite science. Be- 

 sides editing the surgical writings of his teacher, Pierre 

 Joseph Desault, in three volumes, he is himself the author 

 of three separate works, any one of which would have 

 secured him fame. Bichat 's claim to recognition as a 

 great biologist lies in his division, in 1800. of the tissues 

 of the body into twenty-one non-microscopic varieties. 



Francis Maitland Balfour ended his brief career at the 

 same age as did Bichat, thirty-one; but during the few 

 years he devoted to his favorite study of embryology he 

 laid a secure foundation for lasting fame. Especially in 

 his monograph on the development of the elasmobranch 

 fishes and in his comparative embryology, he exhibited a 

 broad grasp of the subject which has seldom been equalled 

 in the same field of learning. 



Andreas Vesalius, the great Flemish anatomist, de- 

 scended from a family of learned physicians, began his 

 study of anatomy at the age of fourteen with Dubois in 

 Paris, and at the age of twenty-two was called to Padua 

 to give public demonstrations in anatomy. His large 

 work on human anatomy, "De corporis humani Fabrica," 

 which earned him the title of the founder of modern sys- 

 tematic anatomy, was published when he was thirty. Al- 

 though he lived for twenty years after its appearance he 



