Widely spread throughout recent literature is to be noted a reaction against the too wide and unreserved application of this doctrine. This is naturally to be expected, since it is the common tendency in all fields of scholarship to demand a more critical estimate of results, and to undergo a reaction from the earlier crude and sweeping conclusions.
Fig. 70.—Oskar Hertwig in 1890.
Nearly all problems in anatomy and structural zoölogy are approached from the embryological side, and, as a consequence, the work of the great army of anatomists and zoölogists has been in a measure embryological. Many of them have produced beautiful and important researches, but the work is too extended to admit of review in this connection.
Oskar Hertwig, of Berlin (Fig. 70), is one of the representative embryologists of Europe, while, in this country, lights of the first magnitude are Brooks, Minot, Whitman, E.B. Wilson, and others.
Although no attempt is made to review the researches of the recent period, we cannot pass entirely without mention the discovery of chromosomes, and of their reduction in the ripening of the egg and in the formation of sperm. This has thrown a flood of light on the phenomena of fertilization, and has led to the recognition of chromosomes as probably the bearers of heredity. The nature of fertilization, investigated by Fol, O. Hertwig, and others, formed the starting-point for a series of brilliant discoveries.
The embryological investigations of the late Wilhelm His (Fig. 71) are also deserving of especial notice. His luminous researches on the development of the nervous system, the origin of nerve fibers, and his analysis of the development of the human embryo are all very important.
Recent Tendencies. Experimental Embryology.—Soon after the publication of Balfour's great work on "Comparative Embryology," a new tendency in research began to appear which led onward to the establishment of experimental embryology. All previous work in this field had been concerned with the structure, or architecture, of organisms, but now the physiological side began to receive attention. Whitman has stated with great aptness the interdependence of these two lines of work, as follows: "Morphology raises the question, How came the organic mechanism into existence? Has it had a history, reaching its present stage of perfection through a long series of gradations, the first term of which was a relatively simple stage? The embryological history is traced out, and the palæontological records are searched, until the evidence from both sources establishes the fact that the organ or organism under study is but the summation of modifications and elaborations of a relatively simple primordial. This point settled, physiology is called upon to complete the story. Have the functions remained the same through the series? or have they undergone a series of modifications, differentiations, and improvements more or less parallel with the morphological series?"