320 
OWEN’S POSITION IN 
time, profiting by one set of its influences, limited 
by another. It was Owen’s limitation that he 
occupied himself with speculations about the 
‘ Archetype’ some time before the work of the 
embryologists began to be appreciated in this 
country. It had not yet come to be understood 
that, after the publication of the investigations of 
Rathke, Reichert, Remak, Vogt, and others, the 
of the great cause of the morphology of the 
skeleton was removed from the court of com- 
parative anatomy to that of embryology.® When 
developmental investigation had proved that 
even the segmentation of the vertebrate body is 
not its primary condition ; that such segmentation 
without founding It largely on embryology cannot 
be traced throughout the cranial region ; that a 
process of chondrification, or formation of carti- 
laginous hard-parts, precedes ossification, and is 
not the same in the skull as in the spinal column ; 
that bones are not all similar in respect of their 
mode of origin ; it was obvious that no satisfactory 
theory of the skeleton could be attained without 
taking these facts into serious consideration, and, 
indeed, without founding it largely on embryology. 
It would be a great mistake, however, to con- 
® And even this appeal is not on the history of life on our 
final. We have still to look to planet, as evidenced by the facts 
paleontology for confirmation or of palaeontology, however these 
contradiction of our deductions facts may be supplemented and 
from the facts of embryology. speculatively interpreted. 
Biological evolution is based 
