INTRODUCTORY, 57 



other forms, especially if It were practicable to supply a separate standard for tlie antliro- 

 potomist, the zoologist and the veterinarian, we nevertheless believe that even then 

 these three might be advantageously compared with the cat as a fourth and intermediate 

 form, and that, when all points are considered — size, habit, distribution, physical endow- 

 ment and zoological position — the cat should be chosen over all others, both as a single 

 standard for comparison, and as a subject of elementary and preliminary anatomical and 

 physiological work. 



§ 127. Nor is this choice wholly without precedent. It is true that descriptive and 

 practical works upon Mammals have been more often based upon others than the cat. For 

 obvious reasons, the horse has heen the subject of many publications ; the rabbit is selected 

 by Krause (A), the rabbit and the dog by Foster and Langley (A), the rat by RoUeston 

 (A) and Morrell (A), while Coues has described (47) the skeleton and muscles of the 

 opossum. 



Yet Straus-Durckheim devoted a magnificent monograph to the bones, ligaments and 

 muscles of the cat ; and reduced copies of his outline plates, with a translation of the 

 "Explanations," have been published by our colleague. Prof. Henry S. Williams. The 

 skeleton is delineated and named, in connection with those of the Duck and the Codfish, 

 by E. TuUey Newton (A), and as the work was " prepared under the supervision of 

 Prof. Huxley," the usefulness of the cat has probably been appreciated by that zoologist. 

 Finally, the recent volume by Mivart (B) purports to describe the entire structure of 

 the cat, although no practical directions are given, and, according to notices in The Nation 

 for June 2, 1881, and in Science, and The AtheruBum for June 4, the author seems to have 

 made somewhat frequent and wholly unspecified substitutions of human anatomy for that 

 of the cat. 



The junior author has published two papers {1, 3) upon the anatomy of the cat ; and 

 the desire for a complete account of its brain, expressed by the senior author in 1873 

 (11, 329), has been recently, in part, fulfilled in the papers numbered 2, 3, 4:, !>, (i, 

 7, 8, 9, 12, 13 and 14:. 



§ 128. Reasons for Treating of only Part of the Body. — This 

 work is primarily an explanation of 'methods,, and the descriptions 

 of organs are mainly in illustration thereof. 



The account of only forty muscles covers an equal number of pages. To devote a pro- 

 portionate space to the 150 or more other muscles, and to all the arteries, veins and nerves 

 would swell the volume to undesirable dimensions. Some selection was therefore neces- 

 sary. 



Of the two general regions of the body, the cephalic is certainly more familiar to most 

 persons, more interesting, more employed in art, more often used in experiment, and more 

 subject to injury and disease. To obtain and prepare the heart and the brain involves 

 some manipulation of the thorax and head. 



The arm of the cat is more complete than the leg, since it has all five of the digits, 

 and presents the interesting and important provision for the rotation of one of the epipodial 

 bones about the other. 



Notwithstanding our doubts respecting tbe homologies of the M. claw-trapethis and 

 some of the antebrachial muscles, the myojogy of the arm is in a more satisfactory state 

 than that of the leg, where the great " adductors " are likely to puzzle anatomists for 

 some time to come. 



In short, the same practical considerations which have led most anatomists to describe 

 the muscles of the antebrachium with more fullness than those of the back, have induced 

 us to select the arm rather than the leg for the more detailed descriptions. 



