It would take too long to describe the great development that materialistic physiology took at this time, and to show how the separation of morphology from physiology, which originally took place away back in the 17th century, had by this time become almost absolute. The years towards the end of the first half of the century marked indeed the beginning of the classical period as well of physiology as of dogmatic materialism. Moleschott and Buchner popularised materialism in Germany in the 'fifties, while Ludwig, du Bois Reymond and von Helmholtz began to apply the methods of physics to physiology. In France, Claude Bernard was at the height of his activity, rivalled by workers almost as great. The doctrine of the conservation of energy was established about this same time. Between the cell-theory on the one side, and physiology on the other, it was a wonder that morphology kept alive at all. The only thing that preserved it was the return to the sound Cuvierian tradition which had been made by many zoologists in the 'thirties and 'forties. It is a significant fact that this return to the functional attitude coincided in the main with the rise of marine zoology, and that the man who most typically preserved the Cuvierian attitude, H. Milne-Edwards, was also one of the first and most consistent of marine biologists. Milne-Edwards describes in his interesting _Rapport sur les Progres recents des Sciences zoologiques en France_ (Paris) 1867, how "About the year 1826, two young naturalists, formed in the schools of Cuvier, Geoffroy and Majendie, considered that zoology, after having been purely descriptive or systematic and then anatomical, ought to take on a more physiological character; they considered 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