NOMENCLATURE. 1s 
‘ Confining the attention to a comparison of the skeleton quantities, which is our more immediate subject, 
it would seem to be as difficult to define their species by a mode of absolute Separation or isolation from each 
other, as itis to divide the relationary and combinative colors of the prismatic spectrum. The fluxion or 
fusion of analogous entities, produced in plus and minus quantity, is that state of a natural law under which 
it is totally impossible to circumscribe specific variation, which is nothing more than plus and minus propor- 
tioning. The following remarks will illustrate the truth of this. “I call that,” says Cuvier, “a_ specific 
distinctness between animals which I have classed separately, which, though bearing the same neu of hyoid 
apparatus, 1s furnished with elemental parts less in number and quantity for one animal than it is for 
another.” And to this Geoffroy answers in effect, “Then must it follow, by parity of reasoning, that you 
rate as specific distinctnesses the beings of this one species, one of which shall have produced for it the hyoid 
apparatus connected by an osseous shaft to the temporal bone, the stylo-hyoid ligament having become 
-ossified, and the other whose hyoid apparatus remains distinct from the temporal bone, the bond of 
connection being ligamentous.” .The Ein skeleton furnishes example of this variety of development. Thus, 
have the questions of “ absolute distinctnesses” and “absolute uniformity,” baftled comparative reasoners, 
and, still, the argument gravitates by turns towards “unité de composition” on the one hand, and “ diversité 
de composition ” on the other ; forasmuch as by the former cannot be understood “identité de composition,” 
nor by the latter, “ diversité absolue.” This argument as to uniformity and difformity, we shall, through the 
following pages, consider as one attaching to the variation of osseous quantity proper to each skeleton form 
considered as a whole design, or to each skeleton apparatus as it appears developed of its own fitting cast ; 
_ and, in order that we may the more closely track the paces of the law of unity in variety which appears to be 
one of proportioning minus quantities from a plus archetype or integral quantity, we shall fix attention first 
upon that minus quantity, the vertebra, and according as it shall extend itself, or as the analogue of itself shall 
be extended here and there through series to the archetype plus sum, so shall our ideas grow with the growth 
of the. form, till they and it shall produce the whole quantity. which, like a-generalisation, will be seen to 
include many lesser subjects, 
