Note 875 — Chapter V · (continued 3)

Hunter died in 1793. The researches of Lecanu were published in 1831.

Another, and still more remarkable proof of the extent to which Hunter outstripped his own age, appears in the following passage, which has just been published in his posthumous works, and in which he anticipates the grandest and most suggestive of all the ideas belonging to the physiology of the nineteenth century. ‘If we were capable of following the progress of increase of the number of the parts of the most perfect animal, as they first formed in succession, from the very first to its state of full perfection, we should probably be able to compare it with some one of the incomplete animals themselves, of every order of animals in the Creation, being at no stage different from some of the inferior orders. Or, in other words, if we were to take a series of animals, from the more imperfect to the perfect, we should probably find an imperfect animal, corresponding with some stage of the most perfect.’ Essays and Observations by John Hunter, being his Posthumous Papers, London, 1861, vol. i. p. 203.