1865.] On Zoological Names and Homological Interpretations. 129 



be characterized, each in its own System, by the Uniqueness and Peculia- 

 rity which characterize our Sun in its System " *. 



No suggestion is offered in this paper as to the remote origin of the solar 

 elements, or that of the force by which they are conceived to be condensed 

 into ponderable matter. 



II. " On Zoological Names of Characteristic Parts and Homological 

 Interpretations of their Modifications and Beginnings, especially 

 in reference to Connecting Fibres of the Brain." By Prof. OWEN, 

 F.R.S. Received March 10, 1865. 



In a paper " On the Commissures of the Cerebral Hemispheres of the 

 Marsupialia," &c., of which an ' Abstract ' appears in the last published 

 Part of the Proceedings of the Royal Society CNo. 72), the author quotes 

 the definitions of those structures given as zoological characters by me in 

 a brief summary of the primary divisions of the class Mammalia, commu- 

 nicated to the Linnean Society in 1857. 



The remarks on the signification and homology of those structures in my 

 anatomical publications are not given, I am consequently misrepresented. 

 Errors are imputed to me which the author deems it important to rectify 

 before the Royal Society ; and as the Proceedings of the Society will carry 

 this imputation far and wide through the world of science, I venture to 

 hope that the present defence will not be deemed uncalled for, but may be 

 permitted to have place in the Serial which has diffused the attack. 



In this I am moved, less on personal grounds, than in the interest of 

 science and of scientific ethics ; for of late a practice has arisen of repre- 

 senting a zoological definition of a part which an anatomist may have given 

 in a classificatory work, as the exponent of his homological knowledge and 

 descriptions of such part, in its various modifications and grades of deve- 

 lopment. Cuvier, for example, in his characters of the order Bimana, affirms 

 that Man is the only animal possessing ' hands ' and ' feet ' : " L'homme 

 est le seul animal vraiment bimane et bipede "f. 



The Quadrumana are differentiated as having ' hands ' instead of ' feet,' 

 a ' hand ' being defined as having the thumb opposable : " Le pouce libre 

 et opposable aux autres doigts, qui sont longs et flexibles"]:. 



The aim of the author in the zoological work above cited was to impart 

 obvious and easily apprehended differential characters of the organ which 

 observation had shown to define the groups. 



The naturalist, thus enabled to place his subject in its proper class or 

 order, is not concerned, as such, in knowing the homological or transcen- 

 dental relations of the part or character which has afforded him the means 

 of effecting what he wished to do. 



* Syllabus of Lectures on Astronomical Physics, Lect. VII. 



t Rcgne Animal, torn. i. p. 70, 1829. t Ibid. p. 85. 



