246 REPORT—1846. 
sens, le styloide, les branches de l’hyoide, qui sont ordinairement formés d’un 
plus ou moins grand nombre de piéces placées bout 4 bout. Quelquefois 
ces appendices sont libres 4 leur extrémité, d’autres fois ils se réunissent 
dans la ligne médiane inférieure en entr’elles, ou au moyen d’une piéce mé- 
diane, qu’on peut comparée, jusqu’d un certain point, au corps des ver- 
tébres; d’ou il résulte ce quon nomme ‘sternum’ dans les mammiféres, 
appareil branchial des poissons, hyoide, sternum des oiseaux,” ete. (7b. 1817, 
p- 110). Reserving the consideration of some of these propositions for a 
subsequent part of the present Report, I shall only notice, en passant, the 
complete concordance between these views of the general homology of the 
locomotive members with those which Oken expresses with his usual apho- 
ristic brevity :—“Freye Bewegungsorgane konnen nichts anderes als frey 
gewordene Rippen seyn.” 
Cuvier includes amongst the general characters of the class Mammalia the 
arrangement of their cranial bones into three annular segments, corresponding 
essentially with those of which Oken had demonstrated the vertebral relations. 
‘“ Leur crane se subdivise comme en trois ceintures formées; l’antérieure, 
par les deux frontaux et l’ethmoide ; l'intermédiaire, par les pariétaux et le 
sphénoide ; la postérieure, par l’occipital: entre l’occipital les pariétaux et 
le sphénoide, sont intercalés les temporaux, dont une partie appartient propre- 
ment a la face*.” 
What M. de Blainville (1816) pledges his efforts to demonstrate, Oken 
(Isis, 1817) was exulting in the reception of, ‘not only in Germany but all 
Europe. “ Seit Erscheinung dieser Schrift und nun 10 Jahre verflossen.— 
Man spricht nun von Kopfwirbeln, Kopfarmen und Fissen, von Bedeutung 
der einzelnen Skeletknochen wie von einer uralten Sache; die schon in der 
Bibel und den Propheten gestanden,” p. 1204. The chief differences, as 
compared with Oken’s definition, are, that Cuvier, finding the frontal arch 
to rest upon both ethmoid and presphenoid, assigns to the former bone the 
completion of the anterior cranial cincture below; and completes, in like 
manner, the parietal cincture by the sphenoid in its anthropotomical sense, 
making no distinction between the anterior and the posterior divisions of the 
bone. Cuvier does not apply this principle of arrangement of the cranial 
bones to the skull of the lower classes of vertebrata (in which, nevertheless, 
it is more clearly manifested than in mammals): in generalising on the con- 
stitution of the vertebrate skull, he classifies the bones, after the anthropoto- 
mists, into ‘those of the cranium which encompass the brain, and those of 
the face, which consist of the two jaws and the receptacles of the organs of 
sense. + With regard to the skull of fishes, in which Bojanus had found so 
clear an illustration and confirmation of the Okenian views, Cuvier merely 
says, it is almost always divisible into the same number of bones as that 
of other ovipara. The frontal is composed of six pieces; the parietal of 
three ; the occipital of five ; five of the pieces of the sphenoid and two of each 
of the temporals remain in the composition of the cranium {. 
In his great works the ‘ Histoire des Poissons’ and the ‘ Lecons d’Ana- 
tomie Comparée,’ posthumous edition, he expresses more decidedly his ob- 
jections to the views of the segmental or vertebral structure of the skull. 
Gothe, in a small fasciculus of ‘ Essays of Comparative Anatomy,’ which 
he published in the year 1820, entitles the 8th, “ Can the bones of the skull 
* Régne Animal, 8vo, 1817, t. i. p. 62. 
+ “La téte est formée du crane, qui renferme le cerveau, et de la face, qui se compose 
des deux machoires et des receptacles des organes des sens.”—Reégne Animal, i. ed. 1817, 
p. 62; ed. 1829, p. 52. 
t 1c. ii. (1817), p. 107; (1829), p. 125. 
