ed that it was not enough to observe living
objects in the repose of death, and that it was desirable to get to
understand the organism in action, especially when the structure of
these animals was so different from that of man that the notions
acquired as to the special physiology of man could not properly be
applied to them" (p. 17). The two young naturalists were H.
Milne-Edwards and V. Audouin. In pursuance of these excellent ideas they
set to work to study the animals of the seashore, producing in 1832-4
two volumes of _Recherches pour servir a l'histoire naturelle du
littoral de la France_. After Audouin's early death A. de Quatrefages
was associated with Milne-Edwards in this pioneer work, and their
valiant struggles with insufficient equipment and lack of all laboratory
accommodation, and the rich harvest they reaped, may be read of in
Quatrefage's fascinating account of their journeyings.[300] Note that
though they called themselves physiologists they meant by physiology
something very different from the mere physical and chemical study of
living things. They were interested, as Cuvier was, primarily in the
problems of form; they sought to penetrate the relation between form and
function; their chief aim was, therefore, the study not of physiology[301]
in the restricted sense, but physiological morphology. As a matter of
fact they produced more taxanomic and anatomical work than work on
physiological morphology, but this was only natural, since such a wealth
of new forms was disclosed to their gaze. Milne-Edwards' masterly
_Histoire Naturelle des Crustaces_[302] and A. de Quatrefage's _Histoire
Naturelle des Anneles marins et d'eau douce_[303] were typical products of
their activity.

In the North, men like Sars and Loven were starting to work on the
littoral fauna of the fjords; in Britain, Edward Forbes was opening up
new worlds by the use of the dredge; Johannes Mueller was using the
tow-net to gather material for his masterly papers on the metamorphoses
of Echinoderms.[304] Work on the taxonomy and anatomy of marine animals
was in general in full swing by the 'fifties and 'sixties.

This return to Nature and to the sea had a very beneficial effect upon
morphology, bringing it out from the laboratory to the open air and the
seashore. It saved morphology from formalism and aridity, and in
particular from a certain narrowness of outlook born of too close
attention paid to the details of microscopical anatomy.