THE ANNALS 



ANB 



MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY, 



. . [THIRD SERIES.] 



No. 107. NOVEMBER 18GG. 



XLV. — Outline of a Theorij of the Skull and the Skeleton ; being 

 an Epitome of a Paper read before the Camhridye Philosophical 

 Society, Feb. 26, 1866. By "IIarry G. Seeley, F.G.S., of 

 the Woodwardian Museum in the University of Cambridge. 



By a theory of the skull I mean a way of presenting a set of 

 well-known facts so that they explain themselves ; for a theory 

 should ever be a continuity of facts. 



The value and homology of bones varies so much with the 

 theoretical views used to interpret them, that, with the number 

 of cranial theories on record, it were hard clearly to describe a 

 skull without attempting to co-ordinate the rival views of its 

 structure. Differing in detail, these all affirm, and some attempt 

 to prove, one side or other of the antithesis, that either the skull 

 is a chain of vertebrae or that it no more consists of a series of 

 vertebrae than the vertebral column consists of a series of skulls. 

 There is much to be said in favour of both these views, from 

 every consideration they involve. Every one is familiar with the 

 beautiful way in which Professor Owen brought together brain 

 and brain -case from the whole vertebrate province, till the con- 

 viction dawned on his reader that a skull was but another name 

 for the first four of an animaPs vertebrae. Nor will Professor 

 Huxley^s lucid demonstration be less remembered, reiterated 

 through one vertebrate class after another till we willingly be- 

 lieve, as he would have us, that a skull is a skull — a complex 

 structure, with three segments forming one organ, a brain-case, 

 and two segments forming a face, while sets of bones for special 

 senses close up the eyes and the ears. To the human anatomist 

 considering the human skull it may be a very trivial matter 

 whether he accept one view or the other ; but with the compa- 

 rative anatomist, ever discovering new animals, and often only 

 guided to their true affinities by the skull, different theories 

 give a very different value to arrangements and bones which are 



Ann. i^ Mag, N. Hist, Sei-.3. Fo/.xviii. 21 



