Niles.] 6 [May 16, 



less disturbed by the want of analogy between the thumb, wliieh 

 will become the outer digit of the hand, and the little toe, and shall 

 be very loth to renounce the teachings of all parts between them and 

 the morphological centre of the body for the sake of a mere teleolo- 

 gical resemblance between the thumb and great toe : and we shall 

 prefer to acknowledge our inability to solve the problem, and to wait 

 ])atiently for more light upon the subject, rather than, with some, to 

 utterly ignore the existence of any homology at all between the lore 

 and hind limbs, or, wiih Vicq D' Azyr and Cuvier to regard the fore 

 limb of one side as corresponding with the hind leg of the other; or 

 with Cruveilhier, to consider that the upper end of the tibia is repre- 

 sented by the upper half of the ulna, and the lower half of the tibia 

 by the lower half of the radius, the fibula being represented by the 

 upper half of the radius and the lower half of the ulna ; or with Prof 

 Owen to consider the prolongation of the fibula in the wombat to be 

 the homotype of the olecranon, and the sesamoid bone developed in 

 the tendon of the biceps brachii in certain bats, to be the homotype 

 of the patella ; or, still more unnaturally, with Prof Martins,* to so 

 persist in forcing a parallelism upon the limbs as to assume a torsion 

 of the humerus for the existence of which even he offers no other 

 evidence than his own desire therefor, and which, as has been pointed 

 out by Prof Huraphrey,f would be in a dii-ection opposite to that ot 

 the real torsion of the limb which takes place during develoinnent. 



Note. This paper was read December 19tli, 1865, and accidentally omitted 

 from the record of that date. 



For further remarks upon the views of Humphrey, of Martins, and of 

 Foltz, who has compared the foot with the supinated hand by assuming the 

 thiimb and great toe to be double, and to correspond with the fourth and fifth 

 toes, and fourth and fifth fingers, respectively ( Homologie des Membres Pel- 

 viens et Thoraciques de I'Homme. Journal de la Physiologic de I'Homme et 

 des Animaux, 1863, Vol. vi), see a paper on the Morphological value and rela- 

 tions of the Human Haud, read by me before the National Academy or 

 Sciences, Aug. 8th, 1866. 



Mr. W. H. Niles made a communication on the Echino- 

 clerm fauna of the Budington Limestone of Iowa, Hitherto 

 this Limestone had been considered to belong to one period, 

 but his observations, made in connection with those of Mr. 



* Nouvelle comparison des Membres Pelviens et Thoraciques, Montpelier. An- 

 nalos des Sciences Naturelles, Tom. viii, p. 45. 1857. Memoire sur 1' Ost^ologie 

 comparee des articulations du coude et du genou cbez les mammiferes, les oiseaux 

 et les reptiles. Anu. des Sci. Nat. 1862. 



t Observations on the Limbs of Vertebrate Animals, the plan of their construc- 

 tion, their homology, and the compai-ison of the fore and hind limbs, by Geo. 

 M. Humphrey, M. D. London, 1860. 



