RS eee eS Se ee ee eee ee ee ee eee ee eee 
2 REMARKS ON THE FIGURES OF PLATE V. 
form, would have no counterpart for its own element, 
marked f. In the same way, as two unequal quantities of 
series may be equated with each other, so an entire series 
of plus and minus variation may be rendered continuously 
uniform with itself. For such is the order of Nature in her 
law of series and her creation of variety by subtraction 
from plus quantity, that the adjacent position of minus 
and plus quantities never fails to discourse of lost quantity, 
and to describe what is absent from the lesser by the pro- 
duce of that which is present in the greater. . 
The parts marked in fig. B, with numerals from 1 to 10, 
form a linear series, distinct from the series lettered from 
ato k, but both orders of series are proper to vertebral 
quantities, and form two uninterrupted lines running 
parallel to each other. This is a fact which we should 
chronicle in the memory, and one which nomenclature 
cannot render awry, even though we confuse ourselves 
with the names costa, tubercles, and transverse processes, 
which special anatomy * makes use of, to the disturbance 
of the ideas of the order of natural and uniform series. 
’Tis true that a dorsal exogenous process, such as 2, fig. B, 
is transversely placed, like a lumbar autogenous process, 
marked h, but it is not true that the one piece is homolo- 
gous to the other, either as to serial position or original 
growth, and this is an objection which cannot be made 
respecting the comparison of f with any of those serial 
pieces standing in order with itself from a to &, for these 
are all identical elements. To surgery this distinction 
observable between the processes usually named “ trans- 
verse ” in the dorsal and. lumbar spine may be of as little 
moment as it will be to the veterinarian when descriptive 
anatomy shall have to track in the neighbourhood of the 
lumbar spine of man or horse the course of a gunshot 
wound, but nevertheless comparative science + is not thus 
careless of the distinction which is always required. 
rigorously to be drawn between forms which in no wise 
relate to each other. 
* A reference made to any work written on Human Osteology will shew that the point of transition from dorsal to cervical series above, 
and from dorsal to lumbar series below, is that whereat nomenclature confuses the ideas and interferes with the strict identification of homo- 
logous structures. 
+ Equivocal nomenclature in comparative anatomy has called forth the following remark: “Cette methode peut étre convenable 4 ceux 
qui traitent uniquement de cheval ; mais elle entrainerait des inconvenients en histoire naturelle lorsqu’on voudrait comparer tous les animaux 
les uns aux autres et les rapporter 4  homme.”—Daubenton, Description de Cheval (tome iv., page 338). 
