vi PREFACE. 



have its outlines not only filled up, but even considerably 

 altered by subsequent and more extensive labours ; but 

 the mutual relations of the one as foundation and of 

 the other as suj^erstructure, which this book particularly 

 aims at illustrating, must always remain the same. 



It is hoped that this work, though written with a 

 view chiefly to the needs of University students of 

 Comparative Anatomy, and with especial reference to 

 the application of that branch of science as an engine 

 for education, may in some measure meet the require- 

 ments of the now not inconsiderable number of persons 

 who are attracted to the study by seeing the important 

 bearings which it has upon questions not only of theo- 

 retical and philosophical but also of practical interest. 



The amount of knowledge which is presupposed in 

 all persons who may use this book, may be judged of 

 by the following account of the short preparatory 

 course through which it is the rule that persons 

 entering for the first time upon the study of Anatomy 

 in the Oxford Museum should pass. The first requi- 

 site for a commencing student in this department of 

 knowledge is that he should be taught how much there 

 is to be observed and described in a natural object, 

 and it has been found that such a person can have this 

 lesson impressed upon his mind in an excellent yet easy 

 way, by addressing himself with osteological specimens 

 actually before him to the task of verifying the state- 

 ments made relatively to them in some work specially 

 devoted to the description of them. The vertebral 

 column and the bones of the cranium are the specimens 



