278 Proceedings of the British Association, 



This Section did not meet till Saturday. 



Mr. Sibson presented an apparatus for delineating correctly the 

 relative position and size of the viscera, either in their healthy condi- 

 tion or changed by disease. It consisted of a square frame, covered 

 by transparent lace or muslin, which will permanently bear chalk 

 marks. By taking the outlines of the objects to be sketched (de- 

 formities, well marked conditions of thoracic or abdominal viscera, &c.) 

 on the surface looking perpendicularly at the object, a correct out- 

 line is easily produced even by those who are not artists ; this sketch 

 can be readily transferred to paper by pressure, and if necessary 

 may be reduced by the application of the pentagraph. Mr. Sibson 

 gave an illustration of its use by making sketches from the living 

 body, and entered into numerous pathological details to show the im- 

 portance of frequent delineation, to ascertain the progress of internal 

 and external disease during treatment. 



Dr. Brooke suggested an improvement to the apparatus by attach- 

 ing to the frame a pencil moving parallel to itself and perpendicular 

 to the plane, by means of jointed rods, as in the sockets sometimes 

 adapted to a reading chair. 



Dr. Macdonald read a paper c On Cranial Vertebrae/ — The author 

 commenced by enforcing the value and necessity of the study of what 

 had been termed Transcendental Anatomy. After alluding to the 

 labours of the foreign and British investigators of the subject, Dr. 

 Macdonald laid down the elementary parts forming a vertebra, which 

 he stated to be first, a body, forming part of the caulis centralis of 

 the vertebral column ; second, the posterior laminae, which meeting 

 on the mesial plane form the arch of the vertebral canal, having the 

 spinous processes more or less developed : each lamina is again sub- 

 divided into three elementary divisions, which he denominates pro- 

 tomeral, deutomeral, and tritomeral ; besides these there are, third, 

 anterior laminae connected with the caulis centralis, exemplified in 

 the ribs and part of the pelvis, and also in the bones of the face. 

 Retaining these divisions of each vertebra, the author described the 

 cranial vertebrae, as three pairs arising from the spine : first, the 

 occipital ; second, the sphenoidal ; third, the ingrassio-ethmo-frontal ; 

 by attentively examining the component laminae of these vertebrae, 

 he identified all the usually described portions of the cranium. The 

 facial bones he resolved into two pairs of vertebrae : first, the super- 



