History and Progress of Comparative Anatomy. 35? 



Columbus, though chiefly devoted to the study of the human 

 structure, which he hiboured to render precise and accurate, has 

 nevertheless made some valuable observations in animal anatomy 

 and physiology. In the first book, which is devoted to a more mi- 

 nute and accurate system of osteology than had been previously 

 given, among other observations, we find that he remarks, that 

 the superior jaw is fixed in man and all animals except the croco- 

 dile, in which it moves on the lower, and that in the parrot both 

 are moveable *. The former observation, however, is neither 

 new nor accurate. It was originally made by Aristotle, and has 

 been adopted or repeated by succeeding authors without exa- 

 mination of its justice. It is known that in tho crocodile and 

 other reptiles, excepting the poisonous serpents, the lower jaw 

 alone is moveable, as in th6 mammiferous animals. The second 

 peculiarity, which is to a certain extent common to the whole 

 feathered class, is, however, most conspicuous in the psittacoid 

 tribe, by reason of the elastic plates by which the upper jaw is 

 articulated to the frontal bone. The claim of the discovery of 

 the stapes rests on very slender grounds ; for that bone was 

 previously described by Ingrassias, and nearly about the same 

 time was recognised by Eustachio and Fallopius. He gives a 

 good description of the bones and diiferent apertures of the cra- 

 nium, and impresses the necessity of preserving the turbinated 

 bones of the nasal cavities, which had been overlooked by Vesa- 

 lius. He gives the first minute description of the sacrum and 

 coccygeal bones. A mistake of Aristotle, who insisted that the 

 bones of the lion were void of marrow, he rectifies, by showing 

 the large cavities in the bones of that genus, and which he 

 maintains can be for no other purpose than containing marrow, 

 (cap. xix.) In opposition to the opinion of all previous and 

 most subsequent anatomists, he represents the larynx as con- 

 sisting of a series, not of cartilages, but of bones ; and this idea 

 he maintains on the ground, that, because in advanced life the 

 laryngeal cartilages are ossified, the natural state of these carti- 

 lages is the osseous in the himian subject. It is in monkeys 

 only, and other lower animals, he argues, and in early life in 

 the human subject, that these constituent parts of the larynx 

 are cartilaginous. 



In describing the human liver in the sixth book, he remarks 

 • Lib. i. cap. 8. 



