246 report — 1846. 



sens, le styloide, les branches de l'hyoide, qui sont ordinairement formes d'un 

 plus ou moins grand nombre de pieces placees bout a bout. Quelquefois 

 ces appendices sont libres a leur extremite, d'autres fois ils se reunissent 

 dans la ligne mediane inferieure en entr'elles, ou au moyen d'une piece me- 

 diane, qu'on peut comparee, jusqu'a un certain point, au corps des \er- 

 tebres ; d'ou il resulte ce qu'on nomme ' sternum ' dans les mammiferes, 

 appareil branchial des poissons, hyo'ide, sternum des oiseaux," etc. (ib. 1817, 

 p. 1 1 0). Reserving the consideration of some of these propositions for a 

 subsequent part of the present Report, I shall only notice, en passant, the 

 complete concordance between these views of the general homology of the 

 locomotive members with those which Oken expresses with his usual apho- 

 ristic brevity : — " Freye Bewegungsorgane kdnnen nichts anderes als frey 

 gewordene Rippen seyn." 



Cuvier includes amongst the general characters of the class Mammalia the 

 arrangement of their cranial bones into three annular segments, corresponding 

 essentially with those of which Oken had demonstrated the vertebral relations. 

 " Leur crane se subdivise comme en trois ceintures formees ; l'anterieure, 

 par les deux frontaux et l'ethmoide ; l'intermediaire, par les parietaux et le 

 sphenoide ; la posterieure, par l'occipital : entre l'occipital les parietaux et 

 le sphenoide, sont intercales les temporaux, dont une partie appartient propre- 

 ment a la face*." 



What M. de Blainville (1816) pledges his efforts to demonstrate, Oken 

 (Isis, 1817) was exulting in the reception of, ' not only in Germany but all 

 Europe.' " Seit Erscheinung dieser Schrift und nun 10 Jahre verflossen. — 

 Man spricht nun von Kopfwirbeln, Kopfarmen und Fiissen, von Bedeutung 

 der einzelnen Skeletknochen wie von einer uralten Sache ; die schon in der 

 Bibel und den Propheten gestanden," p. 1204. The chief differences, as 

 compared with Oken's definition, are, that Cuvier, finding the frontal arch 

 to rest upon both ethmoid and presphenoid, assigns to the former bone the 

 completion of the anterior cranial cincture below ; and completes, in like 

 manner, the parietal cincture by the sphenoid in its anthropotomical sense, 

 making no distinction between the anterior and the posterior divisions of the 

 bone. Cuvier does not apply this principle of arrangement of the cranial 

 bones to the skull of the lower classes of vertebrata (in which, nevertheless, 

 it is more clearly manifested than in mammals) : in generalising on the con- 

 stitution of the vertebrate skull, he classifies the bones, after the anthropoto- 

 mists, into ' those of the cranium which encompass the brain, and those of 

 the face, which consist of the two jaws and the receptacles of the organs of 

 sense.'f With regard to the skull of fishes, in which Bojanus had found so 

 clear an illustration and confirmation of the Okenian views, Cuvier merely 

 says, it is almost always divisible into the same number of bones as that 

 of other ovipara. The frontal is composed of six pieces ; the parietal of 

 three ; the occipital of five ; five of the pieces of the sphenoid and two of each 

 of the temporals remain in the composition of the cranium^. 



In his great works the ' Histoire des Poissons ' and the ' Lecons d'Ana- 

 tomie Comparee,' posthumous edition, he expresses more decidedly his ob- 

 jections to the views of the segmental or vertebral structure of the skull. 



Gdthe, in a small fasciculus of ' Essays of Comparative Anatomy,' which 

 he published in the year 1820, entitles the 8th, " Can the bones of the skull 



* Regne Animal, 8vo, 1817, t. i. p. 62. 



f " La tete est formee du crane, qui renfertne le cerveau, et de la face, qui se compose 

 des deux machoires et des receptacles des organes des sens." — Regne Animal, i. ed. 1817, 

 p. 62 ; ed. 1829, p. 52. 



I I. c. ii. (1817), p. 107 ; (1829), p. 125. 



