110 REVIEWS. 
far as we know, insisted upon by the writer of this notice in a 
brief communication in 1866* which Dr. Coues appears not to 
have seen; we allude to it here from our sincere conviction that 
the recognition by anatomists of the morphological inconsequence 
of numerical composition as compared with relative normal positien 
will not only aid the solution of many other problems in homology, 
but will especially enable us to remove what Professor Wyman, as 
late as 1867,+ regards as “the greatest difficulty in the way” of 
those who adopt a symmetrical homology of the limbs. 
The third paper opens as follows: ‘‘ From what has preceded, it 
is evident that corresponding muscles are to be sought upon anti- 
typically (or symmetrically) correlated aspects of the limbs, and 
determined mainly by relation ;” but the difficulties found in the 
application of the principle to the bones are increased tenfold by 
the complexity of the muscular apparatus, and, at the outset, the 
author is forced to admit the present impossibility of making sat- 
isfactory determinations of the muscles acting upon the humerus 
and the femur ; the triceps humeralis, however, and the quadriceps © 
Jemoralis are seen to be homologous in the light of symmetry, even 
more clearly than they haye been previously with the common idea 
of serial homology ; Owen and Goodsir, being apparently the only — 
anatomists who have denied this correspondence. 
The outer and inner ham-string muscles give much trouble both 
on account of their number and their origin from the pelvis, and Dr. 
Coues finds himself obliged to dissent from previous determinations 
of their relation to the two flexor muscles of the fore-arm (biceps 
and brachialis anticus) ; his discussion of the homologies of these 
muscles and of the popliteus, and that respecting the latissimus 
dorsi, and the supinator longus, are admirable examples of pure 
morphological argument, and while the reviewer is not yet fully 
convinced of the correctness of the conclusions upon these and 
other mooted points, he is ready to acknowledge, that the general 
presentation of the muscular homologies is far more ably and fairly 
presented in this series of papers than in the memoir} to which 
their author so kindly refers; which, by the way, like most theses 
of anatomical beginners, attempted to cover too much ground, and 
really accomplished only one thing, the statement of the law of 
eee 
* On a Cat with Supernumerary Digits. Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist., May 16th, 1866. 
t Op. cit. p. 276. : ; 
tOn Morphology and Teleology. Mem. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist., vol. 1. 
