THE DISCOVERER 85 



cordance of the theory with his belief in " archetypal 

 ideas.'' 



Huxley, ever acting on his own maxim, " to regard 

 the value of authority as neither greater nor less than 

 as much as it can prove itself to be worth," was by 

 no means convinced of the truth of the vertebral 

 theory, since it lacked such confirmation as compara- 

 tive embryology might be expected to supply. After 

 examining a number of skulls of fishes, beasts, and 

 men, he was satisfied that each skull is built upon a 

 common plan, and that the primitive skull in the 

 lowest or cartilaginous fishes, where traces of the 

 original vertebrae might be expected, " is an unseg- 

 mented gristly brain-box, and that in higher forms the 

 vertebral nature of the skull cannot be thought of for 

 a moment, since many of the bones, for example, 

 those along the top of the skull, arise in the skin. 

 It may be true to say that there is a primi- 

 tive identity of structure between the spinal or verte- 

 bral column and the skull, but it is no more true that 

 the adult skull is a modified vertebral column than it 

 would be to affirm that the vertebral column is a 

 modified skull." This demolition of a hitherto un- 

 challenged theory added to the strain on the relations 

 between Owen and Huxley, but that minor result was 

 of no moment to the latter, the larger issue of whose 

 labours lay in the " marking an epoch in England in 



