28 MEMOIR OF BARON H ABLER. 
the whole of comparative anatomy, and throughout 
the animal series down to the polypus. As com- 
parative anatomy and physiology are two of the 
most interesting departments of zoology, Haller’s 
claims to the attention of the naturalist are of a 
high order ; and we shall stand excused for dwell- 
ing somewhat more in detail on this portion of his 
labours. 
His work the “ Elementa" astonished at the time, 
and still continues to astonish those learned men 
who peruse it, by the excellence of its arrangement 
— the precision of its style — the immense detail into 
which the author enters on the structure of the 
parts — the profound discussion of all the opinions 
previously delivered, as to their functions and uses 
— the exact and prodigiously numerous references 
to all those passages in authors, where allusion is 
made to the smallest matters connected with the 
science, — and the great improvement which it ef- 
fected hi physiology, by the substitution of induction 
for hypothesis. Any attempt to give the most 
curtailed account of this prodigious work, would 
within our limits be absurd, and we must therefore 
confine ourselves to a very few remarks. 
It should not be forgotten that physiology was a 
very different science a hundred years ago from 
what it is at the present time, and that it was then 
much cumbered with scholastic learning and hypo- 
thetical disquisition, to the neglect of real obser- 
vation and experimental inquiry. Haller was one 
of those who first and most powerfully contributed 
