254 LESSONS FROM NATURE. [CHAP. VIII. 



By a singular coincidence, the casual finding of the muti- 

 The verte- lated skull of a Euminant helped to evolve, inde- 

 ofthl s C kuu. pendently, from the minds of Goethe and of Oken, full 

 and distinct conceptions of a new theory of the bony frame 

 work of the head. Each of these thinkers conceived the idea 

 that the skull, instead of being (as had been universally sup 

 posed) an altogether peculiar structure, was in reality similar 

 in composition to the backbone, or spinal column. The back 

 bone is made up of a series of rings of bone mutually adjusted, 

 called vertebras. Goethe and Oken conceived that the skull 

 was also made up of a series of vertebrae much altered, 

 however, as to size and shape, from those which form the 

 spinal column. This idea, once emitted, was rapidly taken 

 up by Oken s countrymen (as at later periods they have 

 vehemently taken up the idea of Schwann and of Darwin) ; 

 and Spix, Bojanus, and 0. G. Carus further developed and 

 modified the original idea. Nor did Oken s countrymen by 

 any means stand alone ; for Do Blainville and Geoffrey St. 

 Hilaire in France, and Goodsir, Maclise, and Owen in the 

 British Isles, more or less accepted and modified, in different, 

 ways, the hypothesis propounded. Oken, indeed, at once 

 pushed his speculation to extremes : expecting, on a priori 

 grounds, to find the whole trunk, with its appendages, repre 

 sented in the head. He was by no means content with assi 

 milating the skull to the backbone, but insisted on finding 

 the arms and legs, the hands and feet, even the fingers 

 and toes, of the head ; imagining that the last-mentioned 

 members (fingers and toes) were represented by the teeth ! 

 Such a conception may be taken as a good example of those 

 fanciful notions, before referred to, which, not being sustained 

 by objective facts, are surely destined, as was this, to die out, 

 and to disappear. 



.The vertebral theory of the skull, in an amended form, 

 became advocated in England through Professor Owen, and 

 anatomical science in this country will ever be very deeply 

 indebted to him for his attempt to familiarise the English 

 mind with &quot; Philosophical Anatomy,&quot; since all must at least 



