ON THE VERTEBRATE SKELETON. 247 
be deduced from those of the vertebral column, and thence receive an ex- 
planation of their forms and functions?” He states that the idea of the 
three facial vertebre occurred to him in the year 1790, prior to which time 
he says “die drei hintersten erkennt ich bald.” The idea is developed in his 
essay as follows :—‘ The skull of mammalia is composed ef six vertebra; 
three for the hinder division inclosing the cerebral treasure ; three composing 
the fore part which opens in presence of the exterior world, which it seizes 
and introduces. 
“ The first three vertebrae are admitted (he alludes to Oken and Spix) : 
they are,— 
“ The occipital. 
“ The posterior sphenoid. 
“ The anterior sphenoid. 
“ The three others are not vet admitted; they are,— 
“ The palatine bone. 
“The upper maxillary. 
« The intermaxillary. 
_ Tf some of the eminent men who ardently cultivate this subject should 
feel interested by this simple enunciation of the problem, and would illus- 
trate it by some figures indicating by signs and ciphers the mutual relations 
and secret affinities of the bones, its publication would strongly draw the 
thinking mind in that direction, and we may, perhaps, one day, ourselves 
give some notes on the mode of considering and treating these questions.” 
Professor Carus of Dresden has best responded to this appeal of his ims 
mortal countryman: but it must be admitted that the detailed and complex 
exposition of the theory of the six vertebra and intervertebre, of which the 
general results are given in Table IIL. have yielded to anatomical science a 
result which is hardly equivalent to the zeal and pains manifested in the at- 
tempt, or to the artistic merit of the illustrations, published by the accom- 
plished author of the ‘Urtheilen des Knochen und Schalengeriistes’ (fol. 
1828). 
Coe St. Hilaire deems the skeleton of the head to be composed of 
seven vertebre ; and he has the merit of having more steadily sought the 
homologies of the inferior arches of the cranial vertebre than his predeces- 
sors, who seem not to have sufficiently appreciated the essential character of 
these portions of the primary segments of the vertebrate endo-skeleton. 
Nevertheless it must be admitted that Cuvier has made good the grounds of 
his rejection of Geoffroy’s theory, as one based less on observation than on 
purely @ priori views, according to which the bones of the skull, real or 
imaginary, are arranged into seven vertebrze, composed of nine pieces each *, 
The cranio-vertebral system of Geoffroy is liable to the further objection, 
a that he has combined, as in the ease of his typical vertebra from the tail of 
the flounder, parts of the exo-skeleton (e.g. the suborbitals) with parts of 
the endo-skeleton to which alone the vertebral theory is applicable. 
In the fasciculi of the magnificent ‘ Ostéographie’ with which Professor de 
Blainville has enriched his science, the descriptions follow the plan of the 
classification of the bones of the skeleton propounded in the above-cited Me- 
moirs in the ‘ Bulletin des Sciences’ for 1816 and 1817. In the Prospectus of 
the ‘ Ostéographie’, M. de Blainville briefly refers to the great questions of 
comparative anatomy, which the German organologists have comprehended 
under the name of ‘ Signification of the Skeleton, in allusion only to the 
‘gross errors and opinions almost extravagant, of some of the persons who 
have occupied themselves with these questions:” whilst he reprobates, on the 
* Cuvier, Histoire des Poissons, 4to, t. i. p. 230. 
