Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/51

Rh published the results of his latest, though let us hope not his last, work during the present year.

Amongst our countrymen, and belonging to the generation which has almost passed away, was William Bowman. His investigations between 1840 and 1850 on the mucous membranes, muscular fiber and the structure of the kidney, together with his researches on the organs of sense, were characterized by a power of observation and of interpreting difficult and complicated appearances which has made his memoirs on these subjects landmarks in the history of histological inquiry.

Of the younger generation of biologists, Francis Maitland Balfour, whose early death is deeply deplored as a loss to British science, was one of the most distinguished. His powers of observation and philosophic perception gave him a high place as an original inquirer, and the charm of his personality—for charm is not the exclusive possession of the fairer sex—endeared him to his friends.

Along with the study of the origin and structure of the tissues of organized bodies, much attention has been given during the century to the parts or organs in plants and animals, with the view of determining where and how they take their rise, the order of their formation, the changes which they pass through in the early stages of development and their relative positions in the organism to which they belong. Investigations on these lines are spoken of as morphological, and are to be distinguished from the study of their physiological or functional relations, though both are necessary for the full comprehension of the living organism.

The first to recognize that morphological relations might exist between the organs of a plant, dissimilar as regards their function, was the poet, Goethe, whose observations, guided by his imaginative faculty, led him to declare that the calyx, corolla and other parts of a flower, the scales of a bulb, etc., were metamorphosed leaves, a principle generally accepted by botanists, and, indeed, extended to other parts of a plant, which are referred to certain common morphological forms, although they exercise different functions. Goethe also applied the same principle in the study of the skeletons of vertebrate animals, and he formed the opinion that the spinal column and the skull were essentially alike in construction, and consisted of vertebræ, an idea which was also independently conceived and advocated by Oken.

The anatomist who in our country most strenuously applied himself to the morphological study of the skeleton was Richard Owen, whose knowledge of animal structure, based upon his own dissections, was unrivaled in range and variety. He elaborated the conception of an ideal.