THE PRESIDENT 



TO THE 



DISTINGUISHED CANDIDATE, 



S. P. D. 



I return to you, unchanged, the dissertation you presented to me, adding 

 to it but a few observations, expressed in a different type, lest, any thing 

 unpleasant in the annotations might be attributed to you. This academical 

 dissertation is not only highly creditable to your learning, but proves your 

 mind to be untrammelled by the narrow limits of mere practical art and 

 doctrine, and therefore equal to the advancement of science. Permit me, 

 however, merely to remark to you, that you have neglected taking an enlarged 

 view of the whole material collected by you, although individual parts are 

 perfectly illustrated ; thus leaving to the reader the troublesome task of dis- 

 covering the fruit all the more difficult amidst a material by no means trite 

 or common. The following is all which a want of leisure and opportunity 

 permit me to effect towards remedying this difficulty. 



There are two circumstances in which the pelvis of the mammalia chiefly 

 differs from the human ; first, the symphysis of the pubes is elongated back- 

 wards, so that the inferior wall of the smaller or true pelvis, forms a semi- 

 canal, extending much beyond the posterior termination of the bones of the 

 sacrum, and covered superiorly by ike moveable and slender coxygeal bones 

 only. I shall consider a little farther on the value and the importance of this 

 structure in the pelvis of the quadruped, in facilitating the efforts of birth. 

 In this place I shall consider the second peculiarity alluded to above ; this 

 has reference to the ossa ilium. It is known in man that a small portion of 

 the bone of the ilium extends upwards and backwards, above the level of 

 the base of the sacrum, giving an attachment by its inner surface to the 

 common origin of the long muscles of the trunk ; but that on the other hand, 

 the anterior portion of this bone, which is by much the larger portion, is ex- 

 tended by its lateral anterior margin forwards, anterior to the sacrum ; 

 covered by the iliac muscle, it supports the intestines firmly with the opposite 

 bone and the basis of the sacrum, the larger or so called upper or false 

 pelvis. The margin or crest of the ilium is angular mesially from the spot 

 where the ligament proceeds from it to the lumbar vertebra. But the su- 

 perior anterior ligament of the pelvis, which unites this angle of the crest to 

 the transverse process of the fifth lumbar vertebra, and another ligament 

 placed lower down, the anterior inferior ligament of the pelvis, establish the 

 same distinction superiorly between the abdominal anterior portion of the 

 inner surface of the ilium and its posterior dorsal and smaller portion, which 

 lower down the broad symphysis called sacro-iliac has constituted. On the 

 other hand, many of the smaller animals want all that abdominal portion 



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