NOMENCLATURE. ae: 
that it is also manifested how those same skeleton plans. instance certain varieties of form and structure 
when maneiteted relatively to each other, which strike the mind of some beholders rather in that train of 
reasoning which should read the one as instancing a new creation in certain parts of its construction when 
compared with another or with all others, than with those views which might regard those skeleton figures 
one and all to be fashioned of the archetypes of form common to all. 
This unity of type common to all figures of the endoskeleton, and these seeming differences of form 
and structure, such as they are, this universal analogy interspersed with instances of special variation 
of plan and figure suitable to the particular demands in fitnesses, have engaged the attention of all 
reflective minds ever since Anatomy has been cultivated as a science. 
_ All anatomists have owned to the striking fact of a unity of type among the skeleton figures: and 
all anatomists have agreed with Lamarck to affix this character of the unity to the spinal chain of bones | 
named Vertebre, and hence to designate the four classes of animals producing the endoskeleton, as 
“Vertebrated Animals ;” for as much as the chain of vertebra appeared to be that central structure least 
subjected to change ‘of form, and therefore longest persistent in all the classes; but it is now confessed 
that the vertebral chains of forms can with as little reason be accounted absolutely homologous to each other 
as the skeleton entireties themselves. The forms named vertebre are not developed as equal quantities, 
neither are the entire skeleton forms produced as equal quantities. Hven the human skeleton specialty 
instances a plus and minus variation of quantity, as will be hereafter shown, and thus it would appear that 
metamorphosis, or the subtraction of quantity from plus unity or the archetype, masks the original 
character of unity, and renders it minus and various. | 
From that period when Comparative Anatomy could fairly be acknowledged as a science built up of 
accumulated facts, dates the accession of that spirit of generalisation for this science named Philosophical 
Anatomy, which commenced. to reason upon those same facts, and trace out further instances of the 
common analogy existing between endoskeletons than that one said to attach to the spinal chain of bones. 
For now the mind had been led to contemplate the skeleton fabric with a deeper thought, and it was seen 
that the farther these thoughts could be carried, the more surpassingly marvellous became those evidences of 
special designs still bearing record of the metamorphosis of the typical uniformity. Anatomical science had 
now pathored to itself a wealth of facts, and already weary of that dry detail in separate description of 
isolated objects, such as had been begun by a study of the human figure, the mind had now sought for its 
entertainment in the comparison of them. 
This science of ECU thus having become rich in the store of facts observed, whilst it was now 
rendered evident that a general analogy existed between the individual animal figures, the mind next 
engaged in the task of assorting all analogous figures, and classifying them according to their nearest 
relations the one to the other. From this mode of classification according to the apparent analogies of — 
form and structures relating individual figures of the animal scale to each other, sprung up at the same 
time that mode of observation which took account of all varieties of figures as well as all analogies of them, 
and hence dates the entry of such harassing questions into the schools as the following :—viz., Whether 
the differences or the analogies of form should claim a right to the profoundest inquiry, as also: whether it 
were possible for the observer to trace out that limit, thay vanishing point, where the differences ceased to 
