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. It brought morphologists face to face again with the wonderful diversity of organic forms, with the unity of plan underlying that diversity, with the admirable adjustment of organ to function and of both to the life of the whole. Milne-Edwards' theoretical views, as expounded in his _Introduction a la zoologie generale_ (1851), well reflect this Cuvierian attitude.[305] He acknowledges himself the debt he owes to Cuvier; "the further I advance in the study of the sciences which he cultivated with so sure a hand," he writes in 1867, "the more I venerate him."