1858 THEORY OF THE VERTEBRATE SKULL 153 



With the demolition of Oken's theory fell the super- 

 structure raised by its chief supporter, Owen, " archetype " 

 and all. 



It was undoubtedly a bold step to challenge thus openly 

 the man who was acknowledged as the autocrat of science 

 in Britain. Moreover, though he had long felt that on his 

 own subjects he was Owen's master, to begin a controversy 

 was contrary to his deliberate practice. But now he had 

 the choice of submitting to arbitrary dictation or securing 

 himself from further aggressions by dealing a blow which 

 would weaken the authority of the aggressor. For the 

 growing antagonism between him and Owen had come to 

 a head early in the preceding year, when the latter, taking 

 advantage of the permission to use the lecture-theatre at 

 Jermyn Street for the delivery of a paleontological course, 

 unwarrantably assumed the title of Professor of Paleontol- 

 ogy at the School of Mines, to the obvious detriment of 

 Huxley's position there. His explanations not satisfying 

 the council of the School of Mines, Huxley broke off all 

 personal intercourse with him. 



He exposed the futility of attempting to regard the slcull as a series of 

 segments, in each of which might be recognised all the several parts 

 of a vertebra, and pointed out the errors of trusting to superficial re- 

 semblances of shape and position. He showed, by the history of the 

 development of each, that, though both skull and vertebral column are ' 

 segmented, the one and the other, after an early stage, are fashioned ' 

 on lines so different as to exclude all possibility of regarding the de- 

 tailed features of each as mere modifications of a type repeated along 

 the axis of the body. ' The spinal column and the skull start from the 

 same primitive condition, whence they immediately begin to diverge.' 

 'It may be true to say that there is a primitive identity of structure 

 between the spinal or vertebral 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 modified skull.' This' 

 lecture marked an epoch in England in vertebrate morphology, and 

 the views enunciated in it carried forward, if somewhat modified, as 

 they have been, not only by Huxley's subsequent researches and by 

 those of his disciples, but especially by the splendid work of Gegen- 

 baur, are still, in the main, the views of the anatomists of to-day." — 

 Sir M. Foster, Royal Society Obituary Notice of T. H. Huxley. 



