Note 617 — Chapter XVI · ON FORM AND MECHANICAL EFFICIENCY

In preparing or “macerating” a skeleton, the naturalist nowadays carries on the process till nothing is left but the whitened bones. But the old anatomists, whose object was not the study of “comparative” morphology but the wider theme of comparative physiology, were wont to macerate by easy stages; and in many of their most instructive preparations, the ligaments were intentionally left in connection with the bones, and as part of the “skeleton.”