of Edinburgh, Session 1885 - 86 . 
905 
siology.” Referring, then, for more extended treatment to these two 
sketches, it is the object of this paper, after (1) briefly recapitulating 
the main lines of progress in each case, (2) to make clear the essential 
parallelism in the evolution of these two aspects of biology, and (3) 
to make practical application of the synthetic outline thus reached. 
§ 1. Morphology. — (a) We must regard Bufion as neither distinctly 
a morphologist nor physiologist, but as a general natural historian, 
whose wide and brilliant survey of all that was known of the forms 
and habits of organisms gave a semblance of order and method to 
the chaotic accumulations of the mediaeval or “ encyclopaedist ” 
school, which found in his famous Histoire Naturelle at once its monu- 
ment and grave. Without forgetting the labours of Ray and other 
early systematists, we may fairly say that the modern period opens 
wdth Linnaeus. He is to be noted here, not so much for his detailed 
labours, — for his introduction of binomial nomenclature, definition 
of the successively higher categories of species and genus, order and 
class, precision of descriptive terminology, and the like, — but more 
generally for that isolation of the conception of form from that of 
function, in which he laid the basis of the future science of pure 
morphology. The exhaustive catalogue of natural forms which 
Linnaeus began was continued by his pupils and intellectual heirs. 
It is still in progress, as the recent “Challenger” expedition testifies. 
Each new species described means a leaf added to the Sy sterna 
Naturae , and the whole work has thus, as it were, been under con- 
tinual revision and perfection by a constant succession of sectional 
sub-editors. 
(5) The transition from the study of the general form to that of its 
component organs was made by Jussieu, and thence introduced into 
zoology by Cuvier. A new school of morphology arose, in which 
superficial description was supplemented by detailed anatomical 
research, and this line of advance has been followed up by a series of 
brilliant Cuvierians. The school is thus an unending one, to which 
every new descriptive anatomical research belongs as clearly as if 
it were published as an appendix to the Regne Animal itself. 
( c ) The next step is due to Bichat, who penetrated below the study 
of organs, and analysed the body into a series of simple tissues with 
definite structural characters. Here, again, a new movement — the 
histological — found its beginning, and thus, under the Anatomie 
