PECULIAR ORGANIZATIONS. 139 



CHAP. XIII. 



PECULIAR ORGANIZATIONS. 



1 BELIEVE that all the instances which I shall collect 

 under this title, might, consistently enough with technical 

 language, have been placed under the head of Comparative 

 Anatomy. But there appears to me an impropriety in the 

 use which that term hath obtained ; it being in some sort 

 absurd to call that a case of Comparative Anatomy, in 

 which there is nothing to " compare ;" in which a confor- 

 mation is found in one animal, which hath nothing proper- 

 ly answering to it in another.* Of this kind are the exam- 

 ples which I have to propose in the present chapter ; and 

 the reader will see that, though some of them be the strong- 

 est, perhaps^ lie will meet with under any division of our 

 subject^ they must necessarily be of an unconnected and 

 miscellaneous nature. To dispose them, however, into 

 some sort of order, we will notice, first, particularities of 

 structure which belong to quadrupeds, birds, and fish, as 

 such, or to many of the kinds included in these classes of 

 animals ; and then, such particularities as are confined to 

 one or two species. 



I. Along each side of the neck of large quadrupeds, 

 runs a stiff robust cartilage, which butchers call the 

 pax wax. No person can carve the upper end of a crop of 

 beef without driving his knife against it. It is a tough, 

 Gtrong, tendinous substance, braced from the head to the 

 middle of the back; its office is to assist in supporting the 

 weight of the head. It is a mechanical provision, of which 

 this is the undisputed use ; and it is sufficient, and not 

 more than sufficient, for the purpose which it has to exe- 



*The objection here made to the use of the term, Comparative An- 

 atomy, does not seem weli founded. As commonly employed, it is in- 

 tended to designate the anatomy of animals compared with that of men 

 and of one another. It is only by comparison tliat the use of parts can 

 be discovered. Generally, conformations found in one animal have 

 something corresponding to them in other animals ; but even where 

 this is not the case, a comparison is not the less necessary to discover 

 the use of the conformation. Thus, particularly, in the first instance 

 mentioned by the author, he points out the function of the pax wax 

 by the very process which he affirms cannothave place. It is by com-- 

 paring the neck of large quadrupeds in which this provision is found, 

 with that of man in which it is not found, and by comparing the po- 

 sition maintained by man with that maintained by quadrupeds, that he 

 illustrates the object for which thjs provision is made. J2^p 



