ON OSSIFICATION 259 



and the necessity for the presence, of the systemic motor 

 nervature in fractures of the skeleton. 



The notochord, therefore, becomes obsolete, when the 

 ossification of the vertebral column is complete, and then 

 undergoes a process of involution, ending in its almost 

 entire disappearance. Nevertheless, it is just possible, 

 that some obscure processes of osseous affections of the 

 vertebrae, may have some relationship, to this very slight 

 survival of its lumen, amid tissues functionally active. 



When ossification of the general skeleton, apart from 

 the vertebral column, and the basi-sphenoid begins, we 

 are warranted in tracing its lines, along the continuous 

 histological developments comprising the neurons proper, 



FlG. III. A BONE-CELL ISOLATED AND HIGHLY MAGNIFIED. 



(After Joseph.) 



a, proper wall of the lacuna, shown at a part where the corpuscle has shrunk away 



from it. 



their axonal processes, the muscle plates and systemic 

 musculature, and the meso- and hypo-dermal textures, in 

 which these terminate, to which they become attached, as 

 the process of ossification proceeds, and with which they 

 become continuous, by tendonous insertion and periosteal 

 continuity with the skeletal matrix. Thus, the whole 

 structures innervated by the systemic nervous system, 

 ultimately become blended, and merged, into one systemic 

 whole, by complete histological continuity, nutritional 

 oneness, and functional inter-dependence, of all its parts, 

 neural, muscular and osseous, to the end, that the 

 systemic nervous system, is, or becomes, one and indivis- 

 ible, in all its elements, with the great sympathetically 

 innervated, surrounding, inter-penetrating, and supporting, 

 mass, of organic structures, and organs, the two systems, 



