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Report on the Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton. 

 By Prof. Owen, F.R.S. 



Part I. — Special Homology. 



Introduction. 

 When the structure of organized beings began to be investigated, the parts, 

 as they were observed, were described under names or phrases suggested 

 by their forms, proportions, relative position, or likeness to some familiar ob- 

 ject. Much of the nomenclature of human anatomy has thus arisen, espe- 

 cially that of the osseous system, which, with the rest of man's frame, was 

 studied originally from an insulated point of view, and irrespective of any 

 other animal structure or any common type. 



So when the exigences of the veterinary surgeon, or the desire of the 

 naturalist to penetrate beneath the superficial characters of his favourite 

 class, led them to anatomise the losver animals, they, in like manner, seldom 

 glanced beyond their immediate subject, and often gave arbitrary names 

 to the parts which they detected. Thus the dissector of the horse, whose 

 attention was more especially called to the leg as the most common seat 

 of disease in that animal, specified its 'cannon-bone,' its 'great' and 'small' 

 pastern-bones, its ' coffin-bone,' and its ' nut-bone ' or ' coronet ' : some 

 cranial bones were also named agreeably with their shape, as the ' os qua- 

 drature' for example. The ornithotomist described, in the same irrelative 

 manner, the ' ossa homoidea,' ' ossa communicantia ' or ' interarticularia,' 

 the ' columella ' and ' os furcatorium.' Petit * had his ' os grele ' and ' os 

 en massue;' Herissant-f- his 'os carre'; which, however, is by no means the 

 same bone with the 'os carre' or 'os quadratum' of the hippotomist. The 

 investigator of reptilian osteology described ' hatchet-bones ' and chevron- 

 bones, an 'os annulare' or ' os en ceinture,' and an 'os transversum': he 

 likewise defined a 'columella'; but this was a bone quite distinct from that 

 so called in the bird. The ichthyotomist had also an ' os transversum,' which 

 again was distinct from that in reptiles, and he demonstrated his ' os discoi- 

 deum,' ' os ccenosteon,' ' os mystaceum,' ' ossa symplectica prima,' ' secunda,' 

 'tertia,' 'suprema,' 'postrema,' &c. Similar examples of arbitrary names might 

 easily be multiplied ; many distinct ones signifying the same part in different 

 animals, whilst essentially distinct parts often received the same name from 

 different anatomical authors, occupied exclusively by particular species. 

 Each, at the beginning, viewed his subject independently ; and finding, there- 

 fore, new organs, created a new nomenclature for them; just as the anthro- 

 potomist had done, of necessity, when, with a view to the cure or relief of 

 disease and injury, he entered upon the vast domain of anatomical science by 

 the structure of Man, or of the mammals most resembling man. 



* Observations Anatomiques sur les mouvemens du bee des Oiseaux, Memoijes de l'Acad. 

 des Sciences, 1748, p. 345. ' ~$^ a P\^ 



t Mem. de l'Acad. des Sciences, 1774, p. 497. '•" . !\ \W" 



1846. V? % 4 



