26 Descriptio7is of Preparations. 



The first and the second of the unanchylosed ribs have no sternal 

 rib articulated to them, and the first, besides failing- thns to reach 

 the sternum, has less relation also than the six placed posteriorly 

 to it to the lung and the respiratory process ; and these two ribs 

 consequently are often reckoned as cervical ribs. But on account 

 of the absence of anchylosis, and the presence of a processus uncina- 

 tus on the second, which differs very little in size from the first, 

 thoug-h the lung* is indented by it, it may be better to speak of 

 them as dorsal, even though they do not become connected with 

 any sternal element inferiorly. Adopting then this nomenclature, 

 we may say that the Fowl has the same number of dorsal vertebrae 

 as the Pigeon, namely, seven ; but fourteen cervical as against 

 twelve in the latter bird ; fourteen sacral as against thirteen ; and 

 six caudal as against seven. The congeneric subfamilies, under either 

 great family of the Rasores and Columbidae respectively, are found 

 to maintain pretty regularly these numerical relations between 

 their several sets of vertebrae. The differences given may be 

 accounted for as follows : — The terminal bone of the column, the 

 OS en ckarnte, appears in the Fowl to have coalesced with a verte- 

 bra which remains ordinarily free in the Pigeon ; and a simple in- 

 spection of the sacral vertebrae from in front shows us that it is in 

 the more elongated anterior iliac fossa, or ' false pelvis,' that the 

 Fowl possesses one more sacral vertebra than the Pigeon. In the 

 neck of the Fowl, the five anteriorly-placed vertebrae have hypapo- 

 physes, the five in the middle have the carotid demi-canal, and the 

 four posterior have hypapophyses again, on the under surfaces of 

 their centi-a, and it may be seen that it is from one of each of the 

 series provided with hypapophyses that the Pigeon has lost the two 

 vertebrae which place its cervical series in a numerical inferiority to 

 that of the Fowl. For the two vertebrae which come in the Fowl 

 after the axis and atlas are remarkable, as they are also in many other 

 Birds, and (as remarked in Desci'iption of Preparation III.) also in 

 the Rabbit, for the width and depth of the roof of their neural arch, 

 which is less emarginated both before and behind in the middle line 

 than those of the vertebrae placed posteriorly to them, and is pro- 

 longed out laterally into alar processes connecting the anterior and 

 posterior zygapopliyses, and pierced by foramina only faintly indi- 

 cated in the mammal specified. Now, as the Pigeon possesses only 

 one vertebra in this region which answers this description, one of 



