OP i EO 
Pres] 
Repori on the Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton. 
By Prof. Owen, F.R.S. 
Part I.—Speciat Homotoey. 
Introduction. 
Wuen the structure of organized beings began to be investigated, the parts, 
as they were observed, were described under names or phrases suggested 
by their forms, proportions, relative position, or likeness to some familiar ob- 
ject. Much of the nomenclature of human anatomy has thus arisen, espe- 
cially that of the osseous system, which, with the rest of man’s frame, was 
studied originally from an insulated point of view, and irrespective of any 
other animal structure or any common type. 
So when the exigences of the veterinary surgeon, or the desire of the 
naturalist to penetrate beneath the superficial characters of his favourite 
class, led them to anatomise the lower animals, they, in like manner, seldom 
glanced beyond their immediate subject, and often gave arbitrary names 
to the parts which they detected. Thus the dissector of the horse, whose 
attention was more especially called to the leg as the most common seat 
of disease in that animal, specified its ‘cannon-bone,’ its ‘great’ and ‘small’ 
pastern-bones, its ‘coffin-bone,’ and its ‘nut-bone’ or ‘coronet’: some 
cranial bones were also named agreeably with their shape, as the ‘os qua- 
dratum,’ for example. The ornithotomist described, in the same irrelative 
manner, the ‘ossa homoidea,’ ‘ossa communicantia’ or ‘ interarticularia,’ 
the ‘columella’ and ‘os furcatorium.’ Petit* had his ‘os grele’ and ‘os 
en massue ;’ Herissant+ his ‘os carré’; which, however, is by no means the 
same bone with the ‘os carré’ or ‘os quadratum’ of the hippotomist. The 
investigator of reptilian osteology described ‘ hatchet-bones’ and chevron- 
bones, an ‘os annulare’ or ‘os en ceinture,’ and an ‘os transversum’: he 
likewise defined a ‘columella’; but this was a bone quite distinct from that 
so called in the bird. The ichthyotomist had also an ‘os transversum,’ which 
again was distinct from that in reptiles, and he demonstrated his ‘os discoi- 
deum,’ ‘ os ccenosteon,’ ‘os mystaceum,’ ‘ossa symplectica prima,’ ‘secunda,’ 
‘tertia,’ ‘suprema,’ ‘postrema, &c. Similar examples of arbitrary names might 
easily be multiplied ; many distinct ones signifying the same part in different 
animals, whilst essentially distinct parts often received the same name from 
different anatomical authors, occupied exclusively by particular species. 
Each, at the beginning, viewed his subject independently ; and finding, there- 
fore, new organs, created a new nomenclature for them; just as the anthro- 
potomist had done, of necessity, when, with a view to the cure or relief of 
disease and injury, he entered upon the vast domain of anatomical science by 
the structure of Man, or of the mammals most resembling man. 
* Observations Anatomiques sur les mouvemens du bec des Oiseaux, Mémoires de l’Acad. 
des Sciences, 1748, p. 345. 
+ Mém. de l’Acad. des Sciences,-1774, p. 497. 
1846. N 
