SKELETON. 



641 



that, because it is plus quantity, no new appa- 

 ratus ever appears, or can appear, at that 

 locality which it occupies. Anatomical re- 

 search has never yet discovered, and never 

 can at any future time discover, a new and 

 hitherto unknown osseous piece of any form 

 or cast whatsoever at that spinal region where 

 the thoracic apparatus stands fully created 

 from the sternum in front to the spinal bone 

 behind, Anatomical science may safely ven- 

 ture to predict that the searcher after variety 

 and specific differences will never find in any 

 skeletal form, whether of extinct species, of 

 existing species, or as yet uncreated species, a 

 new osseous apparatus happening where the 

 complete thoracic apparatus occurs. It can- 

 not occur at this locality, because the full 

 archetypal osseous quantity is already existing 

 in thoracic structure. There is no regional 

 spinal variety, and no new or special apparatus, 

 in the thoracic ophidian skeletal axis, be- 

 cause the full or archetypal osseous quantity 

 already exists in the thoracic form. The 

 ophidian skeleton has neither cervix, loins, 

 sacrum, clavicles, coracoid bones, ventral ap- 

 paratus, pubic bones, or marsupial bones, be- 

 cause the whole length of its spinal axis is 

 already persistent in costo-vertebral thoracic 

 character. If it be said that these various 

 apparatus are not created for the ophidian 

 skeleton, because they would not suit this 

 particular cast of form, and that the " nihil 

 supervacaneum? is a rule with nature in the 

 construction of animal beings, I grant the 

 truth of this most freely ; but still I will main- 

 tain that this has no power to invalidate my 



present "argument, which is conducted not to 

 disprove design, but to demonstrate that all 

 design occurs by the omission of elemental 

 structure proper to plus archetypal structure. 

 I grant that the ophidian thoracic skeleton, 

 though deprived of all the above-named 

 special apparatus, is as perfect in its own 

 design as the " paragon of animals " himself is, 

 or as any other cast of skeletal form furnished 

 with those same apparatus ; but yet I say that 

 it is as impossible, as it would be unfitting, for 

 creative force to give birth to such a form as 

 the thoracic ophidian, and furnish it at the 

 same time with clavicles, coracoid bones, ven- 

 tral apparatus, marsupial bones, cervical, lum- 

 bar, and sacral vertebrae. Moreover, I assert 

 it to be likewise impossible for creative force 

 to produce any of those apparatus, or all of 

 them, for a skeletal figure, if such figure were 

 not at the same time to manifest a cervical, a 

 lumbar, or a sacro-caudal spinal region. In 

 whatever skeletal form the cervix or loins or 

 sacro-caudal spinal region is developed, in this 

 same form alone can we find the hyoid and 

 ventral apparatus. It is quite true that a 

 skeleton may be found characterised with the 

 cervical and lumbar, &c. vertebrae, and yet not 

 characterised with clavicles, coracoid bones, 

 ventral ribs, or marsupial bones ; but where 

 these do exist, then such a spinal axis as that 

 of the ophidian, consisting of costo-vertebral 

 archetypes, cannot at the same time exist. 

 The continuity of such a thoracic spinal axis 

 must be broken directly any special apparatus, 

 such as 1, 2 of/g. 462., or 1,2,3,4 of fig. 463., 

 appears upon it. A thoracic skeletal axis, in 



Fig. 462. 



The cervical spine of the Menopone, 



Showing that the hyoid circles 1, 2 appear as the ribs of cervical vertebrae, and hold serially 

 related to those ribs 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, which, having been subtracted from the thorax, give 

 to this latter its particular form. 



order to be of what I call full plus archetypal 

 dimensions, should present its spinal segments, 

 one and all, from the skull to the other ex- 

 treme, in sterno-costo-vertebral quantities, 

 such as the thoracic spinal segments of the 

 human skeletal axis. Upon such a skeletal axis 

 there could not appear such an apparatus as the 

 hyoid structure (1,2 of fig. 462. or 1, 2, 3, 4 

 of/zg. 463.), or the clavicles, the coracoid bones, 

 marsupial hones, pubic bones, or ventral appa- 

 ratus, and for this reason, namely, that all the 

 osseous quantity which goes to construct these, 

 when fitness and special design demand their 

 presence in the skeleton, must be drawn from 

 the costal and sternal quantity of the continu- 

 ous series of archetypes, and in such case the 

 presence or creation of the hyoid species of 



VOL. IV. 



apparatus must imply the metamorphosis of 

 the other costo-sternal species of form. Now, 

 the ophidian skeleton itself proves to be im- 

 perfect when compared to this standard ske- 

 letal figure, consisting of sterno-costo-verte- 

 bral archetypes ; for the sternal median 

 structure is lost to the ophidian throughout 

 its entire length. In the ophidian skeletal 

 axis, I find the cervical region, or that division 

 of the spinal segments which immediately 

 succeeds the occiput, having the costae or ribs 

 persisting ; but those ribs are free, that is to 

 say, they do not meet the sternal line in front. 

 The sternal pieces and the sternal ends of the 

 ribs are wanting ; but in that very locality 

 where these should appear, if the archetypal 

 sterno-costo-vertebral segments were perfect 



