THE EXTREMITIES OF ORYCTEROPUS CAPENSIS. fiO.'t 



They each arise from a side of tlie strong ligament, which passes, forked at both 

 extremities, into a resemblance to an X, from the plantar aspect ol* the base of the meta- 

 tarsal to the sesamoids at the base of the proximal phalanx of each digit, and arc inserted 

 into the sides of the lateral expansion of the extensor tendon at the metacarpo-phalangeal 

 articulation, besides having attachment to the sesamoids at either side oi* the bases of the 

 proximal phalanges of their respective digits. 



Their action appears to be, especially when all united, principally one of flexion; 

 separately, they might seem to abduct from, or adduot towards the middle line of the 

 sole the digits to which they are respectively attached. 



They who may have occasion to refer to this and to the preceding paper for facts (it is 

 sincerely hoped that the descriptions of the muscular phenomena there noted are worthy 

 of the name) may, perchance, expect to find at this stage a concluding colligation of 

 these under a generalization of some sort. This, I fear, I am not prepared to offer? lor 

 neither can it be affirmed, on the one hand, that the muscular varieties which have been 

 the subject of these pages have any precise morphological significance, nor, on the other 

 hand, can they be regarded solely from a teleological point of view. 



Eor, with regard to morphology, if muscular peculiarities arc not to be regarded, as 

 some hold, as "subsidiary to osseous arrangements," the converse can scarcely be main- 

 tained—namely, that osseous structures are not modifiable, at any rate as regards their 

 offshoots (or "processes" as anatomists term them), by the condition of the development 

 of the muscles which find attachment to these ; for if this be not already granted, or, at 

 all events, tacitly assumed, how comes it that (to take one out of many instances) in the 

 exhumation of human remains for purposes antiquarian, ethnological, or medico-legal 1 , 

 the development of the processes of certain bones is taken greatly into account as an 

 indication of the muscular condition, or even of the sex (in the absence of pelvic evidence), 

 of the individual of whom these once were members ? 



Now these very bony processes, which are allowed to be affected by the muscles to 

 which they afford attachment 2 , are, in recent animals, in conjunction with the leading 

 characters of other physiological systems, such as the digestive, generative, or nervous, 

 chosen as a basis of classification. Take, for instance, the third trochanter on the femur 

 of an Ungulate (possibly the niggard dole extorted by importunate muscular wants), 

 which enables us to predicate of its once possessor that it was odd-toed, that its horn or 

 horns (if any were present) were median, and not lateral, that its stomach was simple, 

 while its caecum was large and sacculated, and that the placenta which brought to it 

 nourishment in foetal life was of the "diffused," " non-deciduate " variety. 



On the evidence, moreover, of such "processes," to a great extent, animals long since 

 extinct are distributed among the classes which are provisionally formed for them and 

 their modern representatives. By the aid of these, in great measure, have the Mylodon 



. u The bones of the female are lighter, mere cellular, less marked by asperities, and less curved by muscular 



, \n. —. „ M i QCO c +™n<rlv mnrked."— Guv's « Principles of forensic Median. , 



than 

 2nd ed. p. 20. 



Biology,' vol. ii. p. 335 et seq. (Lond 



tome iii. chap. 84, "Kachitis" (2*« edit., Paris, 1865). 



