144 BIOLOGICAL LECTURES. 



commonly applied to the intervening masses of alba by some 

 other word; the German committee selected funiculus. If 

 cornu be retained, columna will be available as hitherto. Even 

 if a change be made, however, why not funis instead of the 

 longer diminutive, upon the grounds stated on p. no ? There 

 could hardly be confusion with the same word as applied to the 

 " umbilical cord." 



CORNU VENTRALE. As an objection to this term it might 

 be urged that consistency would involve the application of the 

 same words to the "middle" or "descending" extension of 

 the "lateral ventricle," which the German committee call 

 cornu inferius. What the American committee may do in this 

 connection remains to be seen/ There would be no real cause 

 for ambiguity, however, since cornu temporale, c. frontale, and 

 c. occipitale are perfect examples of a class of terms that sug- 

 gest parts or regions already familiar. Personally, I have never 

 had any difficulty, the locative, mononymic idionyms (pp. 113, 

 1 50), medicornu, praecornu, and postcornu, having been consis- 

 tently employed by me for fifteen years ('8ib, a). 



RADIX DORSALIS vs. radix posterior. Since, with this and 

 with radix ventralis (or anterior) the Americans and the Ger- 

 mans are at one as to the substantive element, there only 

 recurs the toponymic difference already alluded to in connec- 

 tion with the ridges of the myelic cinerea. The difference is 

 far reaching and literally radical. As with the myelic sulci, 

 columns, cornua, and commissures, the folds of the axilla, the 

 aspects of the thigh, the tubercles of the cervical vertebrae, the 

 sides of the stomach and other viscera, the valves of the heart, 

 there is exemplified one of the most undesirable features of the 

 pernicious influence of anthropotomy upon anatomy at large. 1 



Upon this subject the position of the German committee in 

 1895 is indicated by the following translation of passages from 

 His ('95, 109, no): "As mentioned above, H err von Kolliker 

 has proposed replacing generally the words anterior and pos- 



1 " The influence of the nomenclature of human anatomy, reflected downward 

 upon the dawning structures of the lower animals which culminate in. man, is no- 

 where more obstructive to a plain and true indication of the nature of parts than 

 in regard to those of the brain." Owen ('61), I, 294, note. 



