470 ZOOLOGY. 



accurate such a term is, when applied to a series of bones per- 

 fectly distinct from each other, possessing most of them a distinct 

 mobility. These bones we call vertebrce ; here is one of them. 

 When studied by the surgeon or medical man, it is viewed by 

 him merely as a portion of the skeleton : to the philosophic 

 anatomist it becomes the type of all vertebrate animals, of the 

 entire skeleton, limbs and head included ; f the organic world, 

 vertebrate and invertebrate. Carried further, it possesses the 

 form of the primitive cell ; of the sphere ; of the universe. 



"Now look at this bone in man it appears simple, but it is 

 not so. Originally, that is, in the young, composed of many 

 distinct portions, which afterwards unite with each other, but 

 which remaining distinct in many animals, as in fishes, proves 

 to us, that throughout the whole range of animals so formed, the 

 vertebrae do not really differ so much from each other as might 

 at first appear : that, in fact, the elements forming them seem 

 the same almost numerically, giving rise to the well-grounded 

 belief, that, in the embryo, the elements of the skeleton may be, 

 after all, the same in every animal. From man to the whale, all 

 is alike; one theory explains all; one idea or plan pervades all. 



" Let us trace this chain of bones upwards and downwards ; 

 see how downwards (coccygeal vertebrae) certain elements cease 

 to be developed, or do not grow : still the plan is the same ; 

 identical ; analogous, as regards the individual, that is, repeated ; 

 homologous or identical, as regards one animal compared with 

 another. Look to this section of the skeleton, called the head ; 

 the bones seem widely different from the vertebrae ; but it is not 

 so. They are merely vertebrae, repeated, upon a larger scale as 

 may be required : a chain of vertebra form, then, the head or 

 cranium. These great truths we owe exclusively to the illus- 

 trious South German and Sclavonian schools of transcendental 

 anatomy ; to Oken and Spix, Autenrieth, Frank, Goethe, and a 

 host of others. * * * 



"A vertebra must have a type; thaj. is, a plan sufficiently 

 comprehensive to include all forms of vertebrae. Now where is 

 this to be found ? Is it an ideal type not yet discovered ? Or is 

 it to be found in any extinct or living animal ? I apprehend that 

 it may or it may riot have been found, but this in no way inter- 

 feres with the principle that there must be a type laid down by 

 nature ; eternal ; equal to all manifestations of form, extinct or 

 living, or to come. 



" But the discovery of such a type could only be made were 

 the anatomy of all animals that ever lived known to us ; perhaps 

 not even then, for the future must be wrapt up in the past : and 

 what seems to us now a mere speck of bone, a nucleus, a point, 

 unimportant, nay, scarcely discernible, may, in a future order of 

 things, become an all-important element. As thus : 



