332 report — 1846. 



medical botany has done from general botanical science, its nomenclature 

 must expand to receive those generic terms which express the essential 

 nature of the parts, heretofore named and known only according to the 

 results of particular and insulated observation. A term which truly ex- 

 presses the general homology of a part enunciates the most important and 

 constant characters of such part throughout the whole animal series, and 

 implies therefore a knowledge of such characters in that part of the human 

 body, when used and understood by the human anatomist. Before the cunei- 

 form process of the occipital bone could be defined as the ' occipital cen- 

 trum,' the modifications and relations of the homologous part in all classes of 

 vertebrate animals had to be accurately determined. The generic homo- 

 logical term expresses the sum or result of such comparisons, and the use of 

 such terms by the anthropotomist implies his knowledge of the plan or pattern 

 of the human frame which lies at the bottom of all the modifications that 

 raise it to an eminence so far above those of all other vertebrate animals. 



In no species, however, is each individual segment of the endoskeleton 

 so plainly impressed with its own individual characters, as in Man ; the prac- 

 tised anthropotomist, for example, will at once select and name any given 

 vertebra from either the cervical, the dorsal, or the lumbar series. During 

 that brilliant period of human anatomy which was illuminated by a Fabricius, 

 an Eustachius, a Fallopius, and a Laurentius, the terms expressive of the 

 recognition of such specific characters were more numerous and often more 

 precise than in our modern compilations. Pleurapophyses were indivi- 

 dualized in the thorax as well as in the head : the ' antistrophoi,' ' stereai ' 

 and ' sternitides,' for example, were distinguished from the other ' pleurai 

 gnesiai'*. 



General anatomical science reveals the unity which pervades the diversity, 

 and demonstrates that the whole skeleton of man is the harmonized result 

 of essentially similar segments, although each segment differs from the other, 

 and all vary from their archetype. 



Part III. — Serial Homology. 



Since, then, we are led by the observations, comparisons and reasonings re- 

 corded in the preceding parts of this Report, to recognise, as the fundamental 

 type of the vertebrate endoskeleton, a series of segments repeating each 

 other in their essential characters, it follows that, not only the power of de- 

 termining the homologous bones throughout the vertebrate series, but also 

 throughout the vertebral segments of the same individual, is included in 

 such generalization. 



The recognition of the same elements throughout the series of segments 

 of the same skeleton I call ' the determination of serial homologies.' This 

 kind of study appears to have been commenced by the gifted Vicq d'Azyr, 

 in his ' Memoire ' entitled " Parallele des os qui composent les extremites," 

 printed in the Memoires de l'Academie des Sciences for the year 1774, and 

 Condorcet, in his Report on this ingenious Essay, speaks of it as " un essai 

 d'une autre espece d'Anatomie comparee, qui jusqu'ici a ete peu cultivee." 



Vicq d'Azyr compares, or points out the serial homology of, the scapula 

 with the ilium, the humerus with the femur, the two bones of the fore-arm 

 with the two bones of the leg, the small bones of the carpus with those of 

 the tarsus, the metacarpus with the metatarsus, and the fingers with the toes. 

 He is not so happy in his particular as in his general determinations : his 



* Anatomica Humani Corporis, &c, multis controversiis et observationibus novis illustrata. 

 Andr. Laurentio, fol. 1600, p. 95. 



