332 REPORT—1846. 
medical botany has done from general botanical science, its nomenclature 
must expand to receive those generic terms which express the essential 
nature of the parts, heretofore named and known only according to the 
results of particular and insulated observation. A term which truly ex- 
presses the general homology of a part enunciates the most important and 
constant characters of such part throughout the whole animal series, and 
implies therefore a knowledge of such characters in that part of the human 
body, when used and understood by the human anatomist. Before the eunei- 
form process of the occipital bone could be defined as the ‘ occipital cen- 
trum,’ the modifications and relations of the homologous part in all classes of 
vertebrate animals had to be accurately determined. The generic homo- 
logical term expresses the sum or result of such comparisons, and the use of 
such terms by the anthropotomist implies his knowledge of the plan or pattern 
of the human frame which lies at the bottom of all the modifications that 
raise it to an eminence so far above those of all other vertebrate animals. 
In no species, however, is each individual segment of the endoskeleton 
so plainly impressed with its own individual characters, as in Man ; the prac- 
tised anthropotomist, for example, will at once select and name any given 
vertebra from either the cervical, the dorsal, or the lumbar series. During 
that brilliant period of human anatomy which was illuminated by a Fabricius, 
an Eustachius, a Fallopius, and a Laurentius, the terms expressive of the 
recognition of such specific characters were more numerous and often more 
precise than in our modern compilations. Pleurapophyses were indivi- 
dualized in the thorax as well as in the head: the ‘antistrophoi,’ ‘stereai’ 
and ‘sternitides,’ for example, were distinguished from the other ‘ pleurai 
gnesiai’*. 
General anatomical science reveals the unity which pervades the diversity, 
and demonstrates that the whole skeleton of man is the harmonized result 
of essentially similar segments, although each segment differs from the other, 
and all vary from their archetype. 
Part III.—SeriaL Homo oey. 
Since, then, we are led by the observations, comparisons and reasonings re- 
corded in the preceding parts of this Report, to recognise, as the fundamental 
type of the vertebrate endoskeleton, a series of segments repeating each 
other in their essential characters, it follows that, not only the power of de- 
termining the homologous bones throughout the vertebrate series, but also 
throughout the vertebral segments of the same individual, is included in 
such generalization. 
The recognition of the same elements throughout the series of segments 
of the same skeleton I call ‘the determination of serial homologies.’ This 
kind of study appears to have been commenced by the gifted Vieq d’Azyr, 
in his ‘ Mémoire’ entitled “ Paralléle des os qui composent les extrémités,” 
printed in the Mémoires de l’Académie des Sciences for the year 1774, and 
Condorcet, in his Report on this ingenious Essay, speaks of it as “ un essai 
d’une autre espéce d’Anatomie comparée, qui jusqu’ici a été peu cultivée.” 
Vicq d’Azyr compares, or points out the serial homology of, the scapula 
with the ilium, the humerus with the femur, the two bones of the fore-arm 
with the two bones of the leg, the small bones of the carpus with those of 
the tarsus, the metacarpus with the metatarsus, and the fingers with the toes. 
He is not so happy in his particular as in his general determinations: his 
* Anatomica Humani Corporis, &c., multis controversiis et observationibus novis illustrata. 
Andr. Laurentio, fol. 1600, p. 95. 
