314 OWEN'S POSITION IN 



Bird's Skull ; but it is devoted less to the deter- 

 mination of " special" than of "general homo- 

 logies ; " it has, in fact, a much higher aim than 

 the contemporary publication of the French anato- 

 mist, in which we seek in vain for any glimpse of 

 those higher relations of the bones of the skull, 

 the discovery of which has conferred immortality 

 on the name of Oken. 3 ' 



And the ' Conclusion ' of the same work (pp. 

 1 71-172) abounds in the sense of the Okenian 

 philosophy. The explanation of the facts of mor- 

 phology is sought in the ' principle of vegetative 

 repetition ; ' in the interaction of a ' general and 

 all-pervading polarising force,' with an ' adaptive 

 or special organising force,' identified with the 

 Platonic tSea. Whether they be sound or un- 

 sound, nothing can be more opposed to the 

 Cuvierian tradition than speculations of this 

 order. 



The ' Programm ' to which these sympathetic 

 references are made, opens with some sentences 

 which are worth attention, since they furnish a 

 typical example of the speculative procedure of 

 the Nattirphilosophie school. 



' A vesicle ossifies, and it is a vertebra. A 

 vesicle elongates into a tube, becomes jointed, 

 ossifies, and it is a vertebral column. The tube 



3 There are even stronger treatise, Princifies cfOsteologie 

 expressions to the same effect co7iiftaree, published in 1855. 

 in the French version of the 



