PHYSIOLOGY AND COMPARATIVE AJSTATOMY. 639 



a term first applied to anatomy by the philosophers of Germany ; and 

 this term Mr. Owen adopts, to the exclusion of terms more loosely de 

 noting identity or similarity. And the Homology of the various bones 

 of vertebrates having been in a great degree determined by the labors 

 of previous anatomists, Mr. Owen has proposed names for each of the 

 bones : the condition of such names being, that the homologues in all 

 vertebrates shall be called by the same name, and that these names 

 shall be founded upon the terms and phrases in which the great ana- 

 tomists of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries expressed the results of 

 their researches respecting the human skeleton. These names, thus 

 selected, so far as concerned the bones of the Head of Fishes, one of 

 the most difficult cases of this Special Homology, he published in a 

 Table, 1 in which they were compared, in parallel columns, with the 

 names or phrases used for the like purpose by Cuvier, Agassiz, Geoffroy, 

 Hallman, Soemmering, Meckel, and Wagner. As an example of the 

 considerations by which this selection of names was determined, I may 

 quote what he says with regard to one of these bones of the skull. 



" With regard to the ' squamosal ' (squamosum. Lat. pars squa- 

 inosa ossis temporis. Soemmering), it might be asked why the term 

 ' temporal' might not be retained for this bone. I reply, because that 

 term has long been, and is now universally, understood in human ana- 

 tomy to signify a peculiarly anthropotomical coalesced congeries of 

 bones, which includes the ' squamosal' together with the 'petrosal,' the 

 * tympanic,' the ' mastoid,' and the ' stylohyal.' It seems preferable, 

 therefore, to restrict the signification of the term 'temporal' to the 

 whole (in Man) of which the ' squamosal' is a part. To this part Cu- 

 vier has unfortunately applied the term ' temporal' in one class, and 

 ' jugal' in another ; and he has also transferred the term ' temporal' to 

 a third equally distinct bone in fishes ; while to increase the confusion 

 M. Agassiz has shifted the name to a fourth different bone- in the skull 

 of fishes. Whatever, therefore, may be the value assigned to the argu- 

 ments which will be presently set forth, as to the special homologies 

 of the ' pars squamosa ossis temporis,' I have felt compelled to express 

 the conclusion by a definite term, and in the present instance, have 

 selected that which recalls the best accepted anthropomorphical desig- 

 nation of the part ; although ' squamosal' must be understood and 

 applied in an arbitrary sense ; and not as descriptive of a scale-like 



1 Lectures on Vertebrates. 1846, p. 158. And On the Archetype and Homo- 

 loaies of the Vertebrate Skeleton. 1S48, p. 172. 



