92 Transactions of the 



like unto that wliich the poet sjieaketh of, Aerei meUis coelestia dona, 

 distilling and contriving it out of particulars natural and artificial, as 

 the flowers of the field and garden, shall find that the mind of herself 

 by nature doth manage and act an induction much better than they 

 describe it. For to conclude upon an enumeration of particulars, 

 without instance contradictory, is no conclusion, but a conjecture ; for 

 who can assure, in many subjects, upon those particulars which 

 appear of a side, that there are not other on the contrary side which 

 appear not ? 



" As if Samuel should have rested upon those sons of Jesse which 

 were brought before him, and failed of David, which was in the 

 field." 



Hastening through this part, 1 must give the last words of 

 transcendentalism, as uttered by an anatomist still li\dng beyond 

 the Great Water. 



In the number of that useful periodical, 'Nature,' which ap- 

 peared on the 28th of December last, the editor has solemnly and 

 in good faith given the abstract of a paper read at the Indianopolis 

 Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 

 by Dr. T. C. Hilgard. The title of this production is the " Numeric 

 Relations of the Vertebrate System." I can only give you, as 

 specimens, the head and tail of this monstrous production of a 

 human mind — a production which doubtless cost its parent the 

 severest throes, after which he must have '*' felt himself spent, and 

 fumbled for his brains." 



" There are five (not foiu* only) complete neural rib arches to the 

 cranium of all vertebrate animals, to wit — (1) The condylar or sen- 

 sitive belt, with the condyle plates for side ribs, and the lower arch 

 of the transversely bipartite occiput for its vault piece ; (2) the 

 petrosal or acoustic, containing the auditory nerves in its side beams 

 (easily detected by removing the ear drum of felines, &c.), and over- 

 arched by the interior belt of the occipital squama ; (3) the parietal 

 belt, originally containing the true gustative of fixed tastes (sour, 

 sweet, salt, and bitter), the glosso-pharyngeal, in an incision, from 

 which it is, however, soon crowded out by the internal carotid artery, 

 and the overlapping ' acoustic rib blade.' The next (4) is the optic 

 or frontal, visibly succeeded, in fishes, by (5) the ethmoidal or 

 olfactory vertebra. The rest of the cranium is formed by its ' ex- 

 tremities ' or prehensile apjjendages." 



That is the head of the theory : now for the tail. 



" The vertebral blocks, as well as the ribs, are the product of the 

 primitive axial series of (invertebral) discs, which, when completely 

 arrayed, each bear five branches — viz. two pair of haemal arches, two 

 pair of neural arches, and a fascicle of i^arallcl elects, so to speak, 

 which being cemented together, both in the front and rear, by the 

 superficial ossification of the discs at either end, are fused into the 



