DE. J. MUEIE ON THE MANATEE. 43 



As to the reading of the cervical nerves, it seems to me that every thing I had pre- 

 viously advanced in my memoir (/. c. pp. 137, 152, and 184) is borne out in this fresh 

 dissection. Prof. Lankester (in Prof. Garrod's paper, I. c. p. 143) rightly admits that I 

 never insisted that the two nerves issuing between the second and third cervical ver- 

 tebrae had du-ect origin in the medulla'. Moreover, if his inference (certainly not ex- 

 pressed by mine) of the actual separate spinal-cord origin of the two nerves in question 

 be invalidated by this more recent investigation on my own part, the purport of my 

 reasoning nevertheless remains unshaken. I distinctly based my argument of the 

 absent cervical vertebra in Manatus being most probably the third (and not the seventh 

 as Prof. Brandt had maintained, or sixth as suggested by Prof. Flower), on the ana- 

 logy of Cetaceans' ankylosed cervicals, and on the number and disposition of the scalene 

 tendons, besides the presence and issue of double nerve-trunk from between the second, 

 and third neck-vertebrae. I confess it would have been more satisfactory had I here- 

 tofore and now been able to demonstrate the two disputed nerves as indubitably derived 

 from separate nervous centres of the spinal cord itself; but I have taken the safe 

 course of showing the condition of things I met with, and not strained fact to fancy 

 or desirable preconceived idea. Of the circumstances attending Prof. Edouard Van 

 Beneden's examination of a Manatee in Brazil I can say little ; but what I have learned 

 of Professors Lankester and Garrod's manipulation denotes that they cannot have 

 made the patient and careful dissection of the parts needful to follow out the dispo- 

 sition of nerves from the intervertebral neck-foramina, or the relations of the nerve- 

 distribution thereafter. I myself have found it an extremely difficult task ; for what 

 between manifold rete mirabile without and within the vertebral column, the inter- 

 mingling of blood-vessels and nerves, oozing of blood, and occasional delicate tact 

 requisite to distinguish soiled nerves from the surrounding tissues, only long and most 

 tiresome scalpel work can display the parts sufficiently for positive assertions to be 

 made. 



Notwithstanding, and taking the present standpoint of the case, presumed unity of 

 spinal-cord origin (?), the first two clauses [supra) of my grounds of argument retain 

 their importance ; and the third, or exterior double nervous cords and their distribution 

 to those parts of the neck usually supplied by the third and fourth cervical nerves, 

 remains to be accounted for. There exists, in fact, but a slight modification of what 

 obtains in other seven-cervicalled mammals, adjusted to the special wants of this anoma- 

 lous Sirenian case. The nerve-trunks of the posterior end of the neck, on the contrary, 

 exhibit no tendency to supply a deficiency, were it of the seventh or the eighth cervical 

 vertebra (that is, the missing one as Brandt and Flower maintained). Were further 

 support needed for my facts, reasoning, and deduction, I might cite Dr. Chapman, who 

 {I. c. p. 455) specially mentions he found the cervical nerves as I have stated, and he 

 agrees with me as to the third vertebra being the missing one. Again, the veiy 

 ' I presume Prof. Lankester means spinal cjrd ; else even this fact would be a novelty. 



VOL. XI. — PAET II. No. 4. — August, 1880. u 



