132 Thomas Henry Huxley 



however, thrown into disrepute by various fantastic the- 

 ories with which Oken surrounded it. Later on, Cuvier 

 removed from it these wilder excrescences, and ampli- 

 fied the basis of observation upon which the underlying 

 theory of the unit}' of t5'pe of the skull throughout the 

 vertebrates was based. Cuvier, however, came to re- 

 ject the theor}', except so far as it applied to the pos- 

 terior or occipital segment of the skull. Later on, 

 Owen resuscitated the theory, first throwing doubt on 

 the merit of Goethe, and then suggesting that Oken, 

 instead of relying on the observed facts, had deduced 

 the whole theory from his own imagination. Owen, 

 although he made no new contribution to fact or theory 

 in this matter, practically claimed the whole credit of it 

 as a scientific h5'pothesis. 



When Huxley took up the subject, the position was 

 that the vertebral theory was in full possession of the 

 field, under the auspices of Owen. Huxley began 

 afresh from observed facts. The first object of his in- 

 vestigation was to settle once for all the question as to 

 whether the skulls of all vertebrates were essentially 

 modifications of the same type. He took in succession 

 the skulls of man, sheep, bird, turtle, and carp, and 

 .showed that in all these there were to be distinguished 

 the same four basi-cranial regions : the basi-occipital, 

 basi-sphenoid, pre-sphenoid, and ethmoid. These were 

 essentially identical with the centra of the four verte- 

 brae of Oken. Similarl}^ he showed the composition 

 of the lateral and dorsal walls, proving the essential 

 identity of the structures involved and of their rela- 

 tions to the nerve exits in the great types he had 

 chosen. In the series of lectures delivered before the 

 College of Surgeons, he extended his observations to a 

 much larger series of vertebrates, and substantiall}' laid 



