Traces of Unity, &c. 55 



note appended to this sketch by his French translator 

 and commentator, Dr. Martins, it is stated that this idea 

 dawned upon Goethe nineteen years previously in a way 

 which is surprisingly like that in which it blazed upon 

 Oken. " Goethe se promenant dans le cemetiere des 

 juifs au Lido, pres de Venise, remassa sur le sable une 

 tete de belier dont le crane etait fendu longitudinale- 

 ment, et, en la regardant, 1'idee lui vint a 1'instant meme 

 que la face etait composed de vertebres : la transition 

 du spheno'ide anterieur a 1'ethmoide lui parut evidente 

 au premier coup-d'-oeil. C'etait in 1791, and a cette 

 epoque il ne fit point connaitre son id^e." So writes 

 Dr. Martins. And as to the claims of the other three, 

 Owen in a few words says all that need be said in a 

 report on the homologies of the vertebrate skeleton 

 presented to the British Association for the advance- 

 ment of science at the meeting in 1846. "Autenrieth 

 and Jean-Pierre Frank had alluded, in a general way, to 

 the analogy between the skull and the vertebral column, 

 and Ulrich, reproducing formally Oken's more matured 

 opinions on the cranial vertebra, says, ' Kielmeyerum 

 praeceptorem pie venerandum quamvis vertebram tan- 

 quam caput integrum considerari posse in scholis anato- 

 micis docentem audivi.' And the essential idea was 

 doubtless present in Kielmeyer's mind, though he 

 reversed the proposition, and, instead of calling the 

 skull a vertebra, he said each vertebra might be called 

 a skull." 



In the inaugural lecture already referred to Oken 

 finds in the skull of a lamb, which served him for a text, 

 three vertebrae, the ear-vertebra (ohrwirbel), the jaw- 

 vertebra (kieferwirbel), and the eye-vertebra (augwirbel). 

 The ear-vertebra has for its great foramen the foramen 

 magnum of the occipital bone, the occipital condyles 



