ON THE VERTEBRATE SKELETON. 245 
or declared rejection, may calmly and confidently await the acknowledgments 
of his rights in the discovery. 
It has been unfortunate for Oken, that, with one exception—the gifted 
Bojanus—his successors in the development of the vertebral theory of the 
skull have hitherto exaggerated rather than retrenched the errors of their 
guide. Spix* lends an almost servile aid to Oken in endowing the artist’s 
symbol of the cherub with all that it seems most to want, a thorax, abdomen 
and pelvis, arms, legs, hands and feet. He adopts Oken’s original number 
and composition of the cranial vertebrae, and gives them new names, which 
being dissociated from Oken’s peculiar idea of the essential subserviency of 
the cranial segments to certain organs of sense, are likely to be retained. 
: Bojanust+ seems first to have determined the true elements of the neural 
arch of the nasal vertebra; and was as happy in perceiving the pleurapo- 
_ physial relations of the tympanic pedicle, as Oken had been in reference to 
__. the palatine bone. He was less accurate in his idea of the vertebra to which 
it belonged. The analysis of Bojanus’ craniovertebral system given in Table 
ILI. precludes the necessity of dwelling upon it in the brief historical sketch 
here attempted. 
3 The modifications of his original idea which Oken has introduced into his 
___ edition of the ‘ Natur-philosophie’ of 1843, bring it into close accordance with 
that of Bojanus, excepting that Oken conceives the cranial neurapophyses to 
answer also to ribs :—“ An den Seiten eines jeden Korpers liegen Filiigel- 
fortsitze, welche den Querfortsaétzen der Halswirbel oder den Rippen ent- 
_ sprechen: ‘die Gelenkképfe des Hinterhauptsbeins’ (exoccipitals), ‘die 
grossen’ (ali-) ‘und kleinen Fliigel’ (orbito-sphenoids’), ‘und die beiden 
Seiten des Siebbeins ’ (prefrontals),” p. 304. With regard to the facial bones 
of the skull, Oken still includes the explanation of their general homology in 
his original idea, that “ the head is (a repetition of ) the whole trunk with all 
its systems. .... The encephalon is the myelon (riickenmark); the cranium, 
the vertebral column ; the mouth is intestine and abdomen ; the nose, lungs 
and thorax; and the jaws, limbs (glieder).”— Op. cit. p. 300. An idea which 
__ vitiated his original essay, and which has had the effect of obscuring a great 
& truth in nature in the smoke of a sacrifice to a false system. 
F This seems the place to notice a virtual testimony to the general accuracy 
of the Okenian cranial system, published in 1816 by the present eminent 
3 -osteologist who holds the chair of Comparative Anatomy in the ‘ Jardin des 
Plantes.’ In a note to his ‘ Prodrome d’une Nouvelle Distribution Systéma- 
5 tique du Régne Animal,’ published in the ‘ Bulletin des Sciences par la So- 
eiété Philomathique,’ 1816, p. 105, M. de Blainville says, “ J’essayerai de 
montrer (1!) que la téte dans les animaux vertébrés est composée, 1° d’une suite 
d articulations ou de vertébres soudées, chacune développée proportionnelle- 
‘ment au systéme nerveux particulier qu’elle renferme, comme dans le reste 
_ de la colonne vertébrale ; 2°, d’autant d’appendices paires qu'il y a de ces 
 fausses vertébres, et pouvant avoir des usages différens” (p. 108). M. de 
Blainville does not (like Bojanus) expressly mention the general homology 
of any of these appendages to the ribs, or parial appendages of the true ver- 
tebree ; but he leaves it to be so understood by his subsequent enumeration 
and classification of the ‘ appendices paires ou symmétriques,’ which he de- 
scribes as being always in relation with a vertebra or median piece. He 
says, e.g. “Ils peuvent étre divisés en simples ou en composés, ou peut-étre 
daprés leurs usages. Les appendices simples sont les cétes. Les appendices 
' eomposés sont les membres, les machoires, les appareils des organes des 
* Cephalogenesis, fol. 1815. 
T Isis, 1818, and ‘ Parergon’ in the ‘ Anatome Testudinis Europe,’ fol. 1821. 
