248 REPORT—1846. 
other hand, in equally general terms, “ those who have been unable to elevate 
themselves to these kind of questions, partly on account of the nature of their 
minds, partly from the want of proper and sufficient subjects of contempla- 
tion*.” 
Neither the first step, the most difficult of all, nor any of the succeeding 
steps in the acquisition of such views of the ‘ Signification of the Skeleton’ 
as M. de Blainville adopts are noticed : no objection to the vertebral system 
of the skull is answered: no error that may have opposed itself to a reception 
of the doctrine is explained or refuted: of the particular labours and dis- 
coveries of individual homologists the author of the ‘ Ostéographie’ is silent. 
He defines a vertebra, in the language of anthropotomy, as a single bone :— 
« Une vertébre, considérée d’une maniére générale, et par conséquent dans ~ 
son état complet, est un os court, médian, symmétrique, formant un corps, 
partie principale de la yertébre, aux deux faces opposées de laquelle, externe 
ou dorsale, interne ou ventrale, s’'applique un are plus ou moins développé, 
d’ou résultent deux canaux, l'un au dos, l’autre au ventre.” (7b. fase. i. p. 6.) 
We discern the influence of the ideas of his ingenious contemporary, Geoffroy 
St. Hilaire, in the admission of the ventral or inferior, as well as the dorsal or 
superior arch; and, like Geoffroy, he recognises the physiological relation 
of the upper arch to the protection of the nervous system, and that of the 
lower arch to the protection of the vascular system : but, overlooking or re- 
jecting the idea of the relation of the ribs as the inferior protecting arches of 
the expanded central organ of the vascular system, he considers the ventral 
(hzemal) arches as arriving at their maximum of development in the tail. The 
dorsal and thoracic vertebrz are, accordingly, characterized as those which are 
provided with costiform appendages diversely articulated to them; over- 
looking, I may remark, the costal appendages of the cervical vertebre in the 
saurians and those which become anchylosed to the cervical vertebrae in 
birds, as do, frequently, their serial homologues to the dorsal vertebre in the 
same class. M. de Blainville seems, also, wholly ignorant of the fact that the 
bent-forward ends of the long transverse processes of the lumbar vertebree of 
the hares, cavies, and many other rodents, are primarily developed as distinct 
costal rudiments : the same rudiments of lumbar ribs are found in the feetus 
of the hog, and in the first lumbar vertebra of many mammalst. “ Les lom- 
baires,” says M. de Blainville, “n’ont plus de cétes, méme incomplétes.” 
The ribs not being regarded as essentially parts of the inferior or hemal 
arches of vertebra, the sternal bones which complete these greatly expanded 
arches are accordingly regarded as a distinct series of bones, and called 
« sternebers.’ M. de Blainville, as we have seen, had before ( 1817) compared 
them to vertebral bodies. In the ‘ Ostéographie,’ however, he rightly regards 
the body of the hyoid as their serial homologue, but does not extend his com- 
parison to the bones that in like manner complete the mandibular and max- 
illary arches. These, with the cornua of the hyoid, and the sternal and verte- 
bral ribs, he classes with the bones of the extremities, under the name of 
appendages (appendices), adopting, in his larger work, as in his original essay, 
essentially the idea of Oken, that the locomotive members are liberated ribs. 
After much additional research and comparison since the first publication 
of my ideas of the constitution of the typical vertebra or primary segment 
of the endo-skeleton}, I have found no reason for modifying them, but have - 
derived additional evidence of their accuracy ; and I therefore reproduce the 
diagrammatic figure with which they were originally illustrated (fig. 14). 
* Ostéographie, Prospectus, April, 1839, p. 9. 
+ Thirle, in Miiller’s Archiv fur Physiologie, 1839, p. 106. 
+ Geological Transactions, 4to, 1838, p. 518. 
