lv PREFACE, 
The present inquiry has progressed from a certain point to a certain point, and within the extent 
of this line have been arranged such anatomical evidences as I have thought would develope a knowledge 
of the law of skeleton creation. The extent of my interpretation of this law is not presuming to carry 
further than the facts will answer to the same. It is the facts which are speaking, and not ourselves, — 
and neither they nor ourselves are answerable for more than they signify. The Mammalian serial 
skeleton axis has been examined by comparative rule, and for the present we shall consider this struc- 
ture separately from any further relation which it may hereafter prove to have with the full sum of 
osteological evidence, whether of recent or fossilized specimens. 
The reader, therefore, will examine my theory by those facts upon which it is founded, and. he 
will judge of its truth or falsity by the same method which was pursued in the formation of it. If he 
be a reader who has accustomed himself to studies of this nature, he will excuse the faults. of style, 
where these have happened, at places in which the praise of elegance was willingly sacrificed to the 
demand for clearness, in the explanation of those facts of “anomalous” formation which, as an anatomist, 
he must know are so many drawbacks to our knowledge of the natural rule of development. 
The object which I have had in view was to gather together, under one notice, so many facts of 
development as would themselves express, in mass, an idea in generalisation, and a natural law in 
collective. Some of these facts I haye met with while attending the lectures, and while engaged in dissections: 
as a student of University College, London. Afterwards, when visiting the Schools of Medicine and Theatres 
of Anatomy on the Continent, many others of them were noticed, and the truth is, that the sum of what I 
had myself collected, I found was nothing more singular than those which all Museums present to the notice 
of everybody, namely, “anomalies of the human type,” as well as those of other animals. These “ bizarre 
productions” may be seen scattered through our own Museums, as also those of the Continent ; and it is 
only while we view them thus scattered and dismembered like so many type letters, strewn here and 
there in unintelligible disorder, that they puzzle our ideas concerning the mode of their production, 
and express to us no one connected sentence. It is in this connected form that I have attempted to 
present them, and in the enchainment of their natural relationship, according to the rules of morphology. 
The name Morphology being one which usually applies to studies of this nature, will sufficiently explain 
the sole interest which actuates the subject: it marks the principal feature of Comparative Science, and 
although it be known as the very antithesis of the practical, yet it does not hence follow that it may not lead 
to something worth knowing. The means which Nature uses in fabricating her designs is a study not 
unworthy the attention of at least all the thinking members of our profession, if those who run cannot find 
time to read. A knowledge of the law and process of design may not suit the immediate taste of the hurried 
practitioner, but yet it will not disagree with those who at thoughtful leisure confess that “ Scientia, mater 
omnium bonarum artium, nihil est aliud, nisi ut Plato ait, donum et inventum Deorum ”__« Bist animorum 
ingeniorumque nostrorum naturale quoddam quasi pabulum consideratio contemplatioque naturze.” —Cicero. 
While believing of myself that the subject of Anatomical Unity forms the goal of all comparative 
research, I sought also the opinions of those whose matured judgment is the student’s guide in both the 
foreign and home schools. Amongst those Professors in the British school, whose opinions of the writings 
of Cuvier, Gothe, Geoffroy, Oken, Spix, Carus, and others, I could more freely obtain, I may mention 
Dr. Sharpey, Mf Quain, and Mr. Owen, and from these I learned that the Law of a “unity of organisation ” 
(while contemplated within certain recognisable boundaries) admitted now-a-days of as little dispute asa 
mathematical axiom ; and that all the real knowledge which we at present possess regarding the Type 
Human, has been gathered from the field of comparative estimate. The lectures and writings of Professors 
Grant and Rymer Jones point in like manner, full to the theme of Philosophical Unity. 
