6-iO ADDITIONS. 



form ; which in reference to the bone so called, is rather its exceptional 

 than normal figure in the vertebrate series." 



The principles which Mr. Owen here adopts in the selection of names 

 for the parts of the skeleton are wise and temperate. They agree with 

 the aphorisms concerning the language of science which I published in 

 the Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences ; and Mr. Owen does me the 

 great honor of quoting with approval some of those Aphorisms. I 

 may perhaps take the liberty of remarking that the system of terms 

 which he has constructed, may, according to our principles, be called 

 rather a Terminology then a Nomenclature: that is, they are analogous 

 more nearly to the terms by which botanists describe the parts and 

 organs of plants, than to the names by which they denote genera and 

 species. As we have seen in the History, plants as well as animals are 

 subject to morphological laws; and the names which are given to 

 organs in consequence of those laws are a part of the Terminology of 

 the science. Nor is this distinction between Terminology and Nomen- 

 clature without its use; for the rules of prudence and propriety in the 

 selection of words in the two cases are different. The Nomenclature 

 of genera and species may be arbitrary and casual, as is the case to a 

 great extent in Botany and in Zoology, especially of fossil remains ; 

 names being given, for instance, simply as marks of honor to indi- 

 viduals. But in a Terminology, such a mode of derivation is not 

 admissible : some significant analogy or idea must be adopted, at least 

 as the origin of the name, though not necessarily true in all its appli- 

 cations, as we have seen in the case of the " squamosal " just quoted. 

 This difference in the rules respecting two classes of scientific words is 

 stated in the Aphorisms xiii. and xiv. concerning the Language of Science. 



Such a Terminology of the bones of the skeletons of all vertebrates 

 as Mr. Owen has thus propounded, cannot be otherwise than an im- 

 mense acquisition to science, and a means of ascending from what we 

 know already to wider truths and new morphological doctrines. 



With regard to one of these doctrines, the resolution of the human 

 head into vertebrse, Mr. Owen now regards it as a great truth, and re- 

 plies to the objections of Cuvier and M. Agassiz, in detail. 4 He gives 

 a Table in which the Bones of the Head are resolved into four verte- 

 brae, which he terms the Occipital, Parietal, Frontal, and Nasal Verte- 

 bra, respectively. These four vertebrae agree in general with what 

 Oken called the Ear-vertebra, the Jaw-vertebra, the Eve-vertebra, axid 



a Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton. 1848, p. 141. 



