THE LUMBAR, THE SACRAL, AND THE COCCY- 

 GEAL NERVES IN THE DOMESTIC CAT. 



With Plate XXIII. 



T. B. Stowell, A.M., Ph.D., 



Principal of the State Normal and Training School at Potsdam, N. Y. 



The present contribution to comparative neurology is 

 offered in the hope that it may serve as a factor to strengthen 

 the argument in favor of the substitution of comparative 

 anatomy for anthropotomy in the first year's work of our 

 medical courses, and also to justify the practice of calli- 

 section or painless physiological experilnentation. The con- 

 stancy of character, i.e.^ the slight variation in nerve ramuli 

 and their distribution, seems to favor making neurology the 

 basis of comparative anatomy, rather than osteology or my- 

 ology. Believing such to be the case, it is hoped that this 

 study may prove helpful in establishing doubtful homologies. 

 If the educational or cultural in contradistinction to the 

 utilitarian view of the subject be considered, there seems 

 abundant demand for the work undertaken by the paper as a 

 guide to laboratory students with whom the end is general 

 and not specific. For it is quite generally conceded that 

 comparative anatomy furnishes one of the most available 

 means for training the perceptive activities as well as those 

 of comparison and induction. Furthermore, physiology is 

 almost wholly a comparative science; while some of the facts 

 known to physiology have followed direct experiment, the 

 great majority are the results of partial experimentation upon 

 other mammals. It needs no proof beyond mention to show 



