ON THE VERTEBRATE SKELETON. 245 



or declared rejection, may calmly and confidently await the acknowledgments 

 of his rights in the discovery. 



It has been unfortunate for Oken, that, with one exception — the gifted 

 Bojanus — his successors in the development of the vertebral theory of the 

 skull have hitherto exaggerated rather than retrenched the errors of their 

 guide. Spix* lends an almost servile aid to Oken in endowing the artist's 

 symbol of the cherub with all that it seems most to want, a thorax, abdomen 

 and pelvis, arms, legs, hands and feet. He adopts Oken's original number 

 and composition of the cranial vertebrae, and gives them new names, which 

 being dissociated from Oken's peculiar idea of the essential subserviency of 

 the cranial segments to certain organs of sense, are likely to be retained. 



Bojanusf seems first to have determined the true elements of the neural 

 arch of the nasal vertebra; and was as happy in perceiving the pleurapo- 

 physial relations of the tympanic pedicle, as Oken had been in reference to 

 the palatine bone. He was less accurate in his idea of the vertebra to which 

 it belonged. The analysis of Bojanus' craniovertebral system given in Table 

 III. precludes the necessity of dwelling upon it in the brief historical sketch 

 here attempted. 



The modifications of his original idea which Oken has introduced into his 

 edition of the ' Natur-philosophie ' of 1843, bring it into close accordance with 

 that of Bojanus, excepting that Oken conceives the cranial neurapophyses to 

 answer also to ribs : — " An den Seiten eines jeden Korpers liegen Flugel- 

 fortsatze, welche den Querfortsatzen der Halswirbel oder den Rippen ent- 

 sprechen : ' die Gelenkkopfe des Hinterhauptsbeins ' (exoccipitals), l die 

 grossen ' (ali-) 'undkleinen Fliigel ' (orbito-sphenoids), ' unci die beiden 

 Seiten des Siebbeins ' (prefrontals)," p. 304. With regard to the facial bones 

 of the skull, Oken still includes the explanation of their general homology in 

 his original idea, that " the head is (a repetition of) the whole trunk with all 



its systems The encephalon is the myelon (riickenmark); the cranium, 



the vertebral column ; the mouth is intestine and abdomen ; the nose, lungs 

 and thorax ; and the jaws, limbs (glieder)." — Op. cit. p. 300. An idea which 

 vitiated his original essay, and which has had the effect of obscuring a great 

 truth in nature in the smoke of a sacrifice to a false system. 



This seems the place to notice a virtual testimony to the general accuracy 

 of the Okenian cranial system, published in 1816 by the present eminent 

 osteologist who holds the chair of Comparative Anatomy in the ' Jardin des 

 Plantes.' In a note to his ' Prodrome d'une Nouvelle Distribution Systema- 

 tique du Regne Animal,' published in the ' Bulletin des Sciences par la So- 

 ciete Philomathique,' 1816, p. 105, M. de Blainville says, " J'essayerai de 

 montrer(!) que la tete dans les animaux vertebres est composee, 1° d'une suite 

 d'articulations ou de vertebres soudees, chacune developpee proportionnelle- 

 ment au systeme nerveux particulier qu'elle renferme, comme dans le reste 

 de la colonne vertebrale ; 2°, d'autant d'appendices paires qu'il y a de ces 

 fausses vertebres, et pouvant avoir des usages differens " (p. 108). M. de 

 Blainville does not (like Bojanus) expressly mention the general homology 

 of any of these appendages to the ribs, or parial appendages of the true ver- 

 tebrae ; but he leaves it to be so understood by his subsequent enumeration 

 and classification of the ' appendices paires ou symmetriques,' which he de- 

 scribes as being always in relation with a vertebra or median piece. He 

 says, e.g. " lis peuvent etre divises en simples ou en composes, ou peut-etre 

 d'apres leurs usages. Les appendices simples sont les cotes. Les appendices 

 composes sont les membres, les machoires, les appareils des organes des 



* Cephalogenesis, fol. 1815. 



t Isis, 1818, and ' Parergon' in the ' Anatome Testudinis Europe,' fol. 1821. 



