242 ; REPORT—1846. 
‘the idea of the arrangement of the cranial bones of the skull into segments, 
like the vertebree of the trunk. He informs us that walking one day in the 
Hartz forest, he stumbled upon the blanched skull of a deer, picked up the 
partially dislocated bones, and contemplating them for a while, the truth 
flashed across his mind, and he exclaimed “ It is a vertebral column !*” Oken 
afterwards tested and matured this happy inspiration by examining the skulls 
of a cetacean, a chelonian, and a cod-fish in Dr. Albers’s museum at Bremen ; 
and on his return to Jena in 1807, he published his beautiful generalization in 
a now very scarce Introductory Lecture, or ‘ Programm beim Antritt der Pro- 
fessur,” entitled ‘ On the signification of the bones of the skull’. He illus- 
trates his views by reference to the skull of a ruminant. “Take,” he says, 
“a young sheep’s skull, separate from it the bones of the orbit, also those 
cranial bones which take no share in the formation of the ‘basis cranii,’ e.g. 
the frontal, parietal, ethmoid and temporal, and there will remain an osseous 
column which any anatomist, at first glance, would recognise as three bodies 
of a kind of vertebra with transverse processes and foramina. Replace the 
cranial bones with the exception of the temporals, for, without these, the 
cavity is still closed, and you have a cranial vertebral column, which differs 
from the true one (‘von der wahren’) only by its more expanded neural 
canal (Ruckenmarkshohle). As the brain is a more voluminously developed 
spinal chord, so is the brain-case a more voluminous spinal column. As 
the cranium includes, then, three vertebral bodies, so must it have as many 
vertebral arches. These are next to be sought out and determined. One 
sees the sphenoid divided into two vertebre ; through the foremost pass the 
optic nerves, through the hindmost the maxillary nerves ( par trigeminum). 
I call one the ‘ eye-vertebra’ (Augwirbel), the other the ‘ jaw-vertebra’ 
(Kieferwirbel). Upon this latter abuts the basilar process of the occipital 
bone and the petrous bones: both belong to one whole. As the optic nerve 
perforates the ‘ eye-vertebra,’ and the trigeminus the ‘jaw-vertebra,’ so the 
acoustic nerve takes possession of the hindmost vertebra. I call it, there- 
fore, ‘ear-vertebra’ (Ohrwirbel): and I regard this as the first cranial ver- 
tebra; the jaw-vertebra as the second, and the eye-vertebra.as the third.”— 
ib. p. 6. 
After entering upon the difficulties which beset him in determining whether 
the petrosal belonged to the first (Ohrwirbel) or the second (Kieferwirbel), 
and enunciating his views on the essential relations of each cranial vertebra 
with a single special sense (excluding, however, smell and taste, as being 
inferior in dignity to the others), Oken proceeds, in his characteristic bold 
metaphorical language :—“ Bones are the earthy hardened nervous system : 
Nerves are the spiritual soft osseous system—Continens et contentum.” 
«« Between the sphenoid and occipital, between the sphenoid and petrosal, 
between the parietal (the temporal being removed) and the occipital, there 
runs a line which defines the anterior boundary of the first vertebra. In the 
line between the two sphenoids, or that which in man extends anterior to 
- * “Tm August 1806 machte ich eine Reise iiber den Hartz,’’—“ ich rutschte an der Siid- 
seite durch den Wald herunter—und siehe da; es lag der schénste gebleichte Schadel einer 
Hirschkuh vor meinen Fiissen. Aufgehoben, umgekehrt, angesehen, und es war geschehen. 
Es ist eine Wirbelséule! fuhr es mir wie ein Blitz durch Mark und Bein—und seit dieser 
Zeit ist der Schadel eine Wirbelsaule.”—TIsis, 1818, p. 511. 
+ Uber die Bedeutung der Schadelknochen, 4to, 1807. I am indebted to my friend 
Mr. Tulk, the able translator of ‘Wagner’s Comparative Anatomy,’ for the opportunity of 
perusing this most suggestive and original essay, which does not exist in either the Library 
of the British Museum, that of the College of Surgeons, or that of the Medico-Chirurgical 
Society. Mr. Tulk is at present engaged in the arduous task of translating the “ Lehrbuch 
der Natur-philosophie ” of Oken for the ‘ Ray Society.’ ; 
