No. 550] NOTES AND LITERATURE 



627 



comparative morphology has no value except in the ways indi- 

 cated, well and good. I neither question nor quarrel with the 

 assertion. For me, however, comparative morphology has great 

 value in numerous other ways ; and there is much evidence, both 

 historical and contemporaneous, that it has other values for 

 many biologists. It is, I submit, a real even though uninten- 

 tional harm, not only to individuals, but to biological science, for 

 an able morphologist to make an assertion which carries the 

 clear implication that the interest in and the valuations placed 

 upon comparative morphology by the men who devoted them- 

 selves to it long before anybody knew there was such a thing as 

 a "trend of evolution," were an illusory or spurious interest 

 and valuation. And I would express my firm conviction that 

 biologists of this present childhood period of the evolution theory, 

 as the era from Darwin to the present day may well be called, must 

 come to see that great as is the value of morphology as a record 

 of evolution, this is still only one of its values; and further, that 

 until such perception is attained, just estimation of the facts of 

 morphology as a record of evolution will be impossible. The in- 

 terest of the future morphologist in his raw material ought to be, 

 according to my understanding, that of the pre-evolntionary 

 morphologist plus that growing out of the later discovery that 

 the facts of structure mark the "historic sequence of organic 

 forms and functions." It is just because many, indeed all of 

 the facts dealt with in this work have values for me over and 

 above those attaching to them as a record of evolution that I re- 

 gret that they could not have been presented in a fashion less 

 calculated to raise doubts in so many instances as to whether 

 they would appear exactly as they do but for the circumstance 

 of having been interpreted by the author in the light of his par- 

 ticular theory of historic sequence. 



This consideration will. I trust, give real weight to my words 

 when I say that the criticisms I am passing on Patten's mode 

 of presenting facts is an apology for a work of truly great fac- 

 tual worth, and not at all an attempt to discredit it. Nor would 



i understand me to be an advocate of "mere facts" 



of morphology; facts, that is, without any reference 

 wider bearings. My point is that all facts of morphology, as of 

 all other departments of biology, have so many "wider bear- 

 ings" that to write down as without value all except some one 

 set of these bearings, even so important a set as that of evolution, 

 w to narrow the horizon of biological science. Against tenden- 



