INTRODUCTION. 
ANATOMICAL NOMENCLATURE—ITS ORIGIN, AND THE EXTENT OF ITS APPLICATION AS AN 
INSTRUMENT OF GENERALISATION. . 
REMARKS UPON THE NAME «“VERTEBRATED.” 
HE anatomical fact which we have here undertaken to demonstrate is this, viz., that the form 
ordinarily described as a vertebra, both by special and comparative anatomists, 7s not a whole 
quantity, and of this the following reasons may be taken in proof :—first, that it is a figure subjected to plus 
and minus variations as to quantity; secondly, that all its plus varieties are simply an increase of its 
proportions by the addition of elemental structure ; thirdly, that all its minus varieties are simply a lessening 
of its proportions by the subtraction of elemental structure. We believe, therefore, that as any quantity, 
either of number or form, which fluctuates between plus and minus proportioning, must itself be a proportional 
quantity of some whole or integer ; so must a vertebra which undergoes the like genetic variation from plus 
quantity to minus be accounted a part or proportional of a whole, or archetype quantity ; and this latter is 
the figure which we have endeavoured to discover by the rule of comparison. 
Now every fact which goes to prove that a vertebra is part of some whole quantity hitherto unknown, 
must at the same time create as it were the presence of this whole quantity, as is self-evident, for when to any 
given quantity Nature makes an addition, then that first quantity now becomes part of a fuller quantity, and 
this latter contains the former, hence the whole quantity becomes the integer. The vertebral form is one 
which Nature adds to, and consequently every addition of structural quantity must cause us to interpret the 
vertebra as being a part of the imcrescent sum, at the same time that such addition becomes creative of the 
presence of that whole quantity of which a vertebra is the proportional. If, Thoin, it be true that the 
whole quantity, or plus, contains the minus quantity, or part, it then must follow that the minus quantity, or 
part, cannot contain the plus, or whole quantity. And applying this simple fact to the form named vertebra, 
we say that that whole quantity or archetype, plus structure, in which we find the vertebral proportional, must 
be said to contain the vertebral quantity, from which it must follow that the vertebral quantity cannot contain 
the plus archetype. 
The part cannot contain the whole, because the whole contains the part.* A vertebra cannot contain the 
plus archetype, because this latter contains it ; therefore a vertebra must be a proportional of its archetype. 
Between plus and minus quantities of the same species or nature there can be no other condition of variety 
* «The whole is greater than its part.” —Geometrical Axiom. 
B 
