the introduction of two terms, “homology” and “analogy,” which were defined so as to express two different kinds of agreement in animal structures, which, owing to the want of such “counters of thought,” had been hitherto continually confused.
Analogous structures in any two animals compared were by Owen defined as structures performing similar functions, but not necessarily derived from the modification of one and the same part in the “plan” or “archetype” according to which the two animals compared were supposed to be constructed. Homologous structures were such as, though greatly differing in appearance and detail from one another, and though performing widely different functions, yet were capable of being shown by adequate study of a series of intermediate forms to be derived from one and the same part or organ of the “plan-form” or “archetype.” It is not easy to exaggerate the service rendered by Owen to the study of zoology by the introduction of this apparently small piece of verbal mechanism; it takes place with the classificatory terms of Linnaeus. And, though the conceptions of “archetypal morphology,” to which it had reference, are now abandoned in favour of a genetic morphology, yet we should remember, in estimating the value of this and of other speculations which have given place to new views in the history of science, the words of the great reformer himself. “Erroneous observations are in the highest degree injurious to the progress of science, since they often persist for a long time. But erroneous theories, when they are supported by facts, do little harm, since every one takes a healthy pleasure in proving their falsity” (Darwin). Owen’s definition of analogous structures holds good at the present day. His homologous structures are now spoken of as “homogenetic” structures, the idea of community of representation in an archetype giving place to community of derivation from a single representative structure present in a common ancestor. Darwinian morphology has further rendered necessary the introduction of the terms “homoplasy” and “homoplastic” (E. Ray Lankester, in Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. 1870) to express that close agreement in form which may be attained in the course of evolutional changes by organs or parts in two animals which have been subjected to similar moulding conditions of the environment, but have not a close genetic community of origin, to account for their similarity in form and structure, although they have a certain identity in primitive quality which is accountable for the agreement of their response to similar moulding conditions.
The classification adopted by Owen in his lectures (1855) does not adequately illustrate the progress of zoological knowledge between Cuvier’s death and that date, but, such as it is, it is worth citing here.Owen’s classification.
- Classes: Mammalia, Aves, Reptilia, Pisces.
Province: Articulata.
- Classes: Arachnida, Insecta (including Sub-Classes Myriapoda, Hexapoda), Crustacea (including Sub-Classes Entomostraca, Malacostraca), Epizoa (Epizootic Crustacea), Annellata (Chaetopods and Leeches), Cirripedia.
Province: Mollusca.
- Classes: Cephalopoda, Gasteropoda, Pteropoda, Lamellibranchiata, Branchiopoda, Tunicata.
Province: Radiata.
- Sub-Province: Radiaria.
- Classes: Echinodermata, Bryozoa, Anthozoa, Acalephae, Hydrozoa.
- Sub-Province: Entozoa.
- Classes: Coelelmintha, Sterelmintha.
- Sub-Province: Infusoria.
- Classes: Rotifera, Polygastria (the Protozoa of recent authors).
The real centre of progress of systematic zoology was no longer in France nor with the disciples of Cuvier in England, but after his death moved to Germany. The wave of morphological speculation, with its outcome of new systems and new theories of classification (see Agassiz, Essay on Classification, 1859), which were as numerous as the professors of zoological science, was necessarily succeeded in the true progress of the science by a period of minuter study in which the microscope, the discovery of embryological histories, and the all-important cell-theory came to swell the stream of exact knowledge.
The greatest of all investigators of animal structure in the 19th century was Johann Müller (1801–1858), the successor in Germany of the anatomists Rathke (1793–1860) and Meckel (1781–1833). His true greatness can only be estimated by a consideration of the fact that he was a great teacher not only of human and comparative anatomyMüller. and zoology but also of physiology, and that nearly all the most distinguished German zoologists and physiologists of the period 1850 to 1870 were his pupils and acknowledged his leadership. The most striking feature about Johann Müller’s work, apart from the comprehensiveness of his point of view, in which he added to the anatomical and morphological ideas of Cuvier a consideration of physiology, embryology and microscopic structure, was the extraordinary accuracy, facility and completeness of his recorded observations. He could do more with a single specimen of a rare animal (e.g. in his memoir on Amphioxus, Berlin, 1844) in the way of making out its complete structure than the ablest of his contemporaries or successors could do with a plethora. His power of rapid and exhaustive observation and of accurate pictorial reproduction was phenomenal. His most important memoirs, besides that just mentioned, are those on the anatomy and classification of Fishes, on the Caecilians and on the developmental history of the Echinoderms.
A name which is apt to be forgotten in the period between Cuvier and Darwin, because its possessor occupied an isolated position in England and was not borne up by any great school or university, is that of John Vaughan Thompson (1779–1847), an army surgeon, who in 1816 became district medical inspector at Cork, and then took to the J. V. Thompson. study of marine Invertebrata by the aid of the microscope. Thompson made three great discoveries, which seem to have fallen in his way in the most natural and simple manner, but must be regarded really as the outcome of extraordinary genius. He showed (1830) that the organisms like Flustra are not hydroid Polyps, but of a more complex structure resembling Molluscs, and he gave them the name Polyzoa. He discovered (1823) the Pentacrinus europaeus, and showed that it was the larval form of the Feather-Star Antedon (Comatula). He upset (1830) Cuvier’s retention of the Cirripedes among Mollusca, and his subsequent treatment of them as an isolated class, by showing that they begin life as free-swimming Crustacea identical with the young forms of other Crustacea. Vaughan Thompson is a type of the marine zoologists, such as Dalyell, Michael Sars, P. J. Van Beneden, Claparède, and Allman, who during the 19th century approached the study of the lower marine organisms in the same spirit as that in which Trembley and Schaffer in the 18th century, and Swammerdam in the 17th, gave themselves to the study of the minute fresh-water forms of animal life.
It is impossible to enumerate or to give due consideration to all the names in the army of anatomical and embryological students of the middle third of the 19th century whose labours bore fruit in the modification of zoological theories and in the building up of a true classification of animals. Their results are best summed up in the three schemes of classification which follow below— those of Rudolph Leuckart (1823–1896), Henri Milne-Edwards (1800–1884), and T. H. Huxley (1825–1895), all of whom individually contributed very greatly by their special discoveries and researches to the increase of exact knowledge.
Contemporaneous with these were various schemes of classification which were based, not on a consideration of the entire structure of each animal, but on the variations of a single organ, or on the really non-significant fact of tact the structure of the egg. All such single-fact systems systems have proved to be departures from the Single fact systems of classification.true line of growth of the zoological system which was shaping itself year by year—unknown to those who so shaped it—as a genealogical tree. They were attempts to arrive at a true knowledge of the relationships of animals by “royal roads”; their followers were landed in barren wastes.
R. Leuckart’s classification (Die Morphologie und die Verwandtschaftsverhältnisse der wirbellosen Thdere, Brunswick, 1848) is as follows:—Leuckart’s classification.
- Class I. Polypi.
- Orders: Anthozoa and Cylicozoa,
- ” II. Acalephae.
- Orders: Discophorae and Ctenopnorae.
