VOL. XIX.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 11 



ligaments so perfectly bony, and their articulations so effaced, that they really 

 made but one uniform continuous bone ; so that it was as easy to break one of 

 the vertebra into two, as to disjoint or separate it from the other vertebrae, or 

 the ribs, or the os sacrum from those of the ilia. Nor could I observe any 

 greater distinction between all these bones than is usually seen in adult persons 

 between the os pubis, the ischion, and ilium, which are but one entire bony 

 substance. The roots of all the ribs made but one equal, smooth, and plain 

 superficies with the vertebrae and their apophyses. The oblique apophyses of 

 all the vertebrae were so confounded and lost, that it was not possible to observe 

 any marks of them. The cartilaginous edge of the vertebrae themselves was 

 become perfect bone. In short, they were as entire as a skeleton cut out of the 

 same piece of wood by a carver. Being willing to see if these vertebrae were 

 united throughout their whole diameter, or at the edges only, I sawed two of 

 them asunder at the commissure, and found this uniting did not enter above 2 

 lines deep, and that afterwards their middles were separated as they usually are, 

 and touched each other only at the edges. On the left side at half a finger's 

 breadth from the vertebrae, two ribs were joined together for the space of an 

 inch, and afterward ran separated and parallel, like the rest, to the sternum. 

 The figure of this trunk was crooked, making part of a circle. The spine 

 forming the convex, and the inside of the vertebrae the concave part of this 

 segment. If the other vertebrae of the back and neck had been preserved, and 

 had bent in the same curve, they would have made near the half of a circle. 

 The direction of the ribs was unnatural, for instead of terminating at the 

 sternum in parallel semicircles nearly horizontal, their extremities where they 

 reached the sternum, dipped so much down towards the hypogastrium, as to 

 touch the sides of the ossa ilii. 



This trunk seemed to be of a grown person, the bones being of a proportion 

 and thickness equal to those of old men. The vertebrge of the loins were 

 larger than those of the back, as they naturally are; there was no unnatural 

 bunching out, their joining together being very regular, no one vertebra stand- 

 ing out beyond the other, either before, behind, or on the sides. The cavity 

 for the spinal marrow had no fault but its bending figure. The bones of the 

 OS pubis were separated as usual. The socket or cavity of the last spurious rib 

 on the right side, being smooth and polished, seemed as if that rib had not been 

 so firmly united as the rest. In the extremity of the ribs next the sternum, the 

 usual cavities for the cartilages to move in were observable, which as it seems by 

 this were not bony, nor continuous MMth the ribs. 



It was a surprising sight to see the sport of nature in the fabric and hardening 

 of these bones, which naturally move upon each other, are separated by carti- 

 lages, and held together only by cords and ligaments, and chiefly that the ribs 



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