when we shall find figs. A’ A” and A’ standing in serial 
order, we are then to read the two lesser quantities as 
having been proportioned from their own archetypes, 
which may be said to have equalled fig. A”, for it is evi- 
dent that there exists no other variety between the three 
It is this difference of 
quantity which also renders figs. B” or C” various to fig. 
A”, with which they stand in serial order, and therefore 
figures than that of quantity. 
we say that figs. B” and C” are the proportionals of quan- 
tities equal to fig. A’’; and this conclusion may be drawn 
even independently of the speaking facts that figs. B’ 
and C’ occasionally produce their elements a to costal 
character. 
The metamorphosis or degradation of a whole quantity 
would appear to be the law by which Nature creates a 
serial skeleton axis. And when we disintegrate the whole 
number 9 into the progressive decreasing series of 9, we 
have 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, as the rational numbers, to- 
gether with all the intervening @rational numbers, which 
latter we may fancy without the demonstration of them. 
Now it is plain that the several quantities expressed in 
the collective symbol 9, are equal to the separated quan- 
tities of 9 when specified as 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 8, 2, 1, and 
hence we understand that 1 or 2 are as well the propor- 
tionals of 9 as 7 or 8, or any other quantity contained in 
9, the whole number. In the same way we may under- 
stand that fig. A” can suffer metamorphosis or disintegra- 
tion for the decreasing series of figs. A’ A” A’B” or C” as 
rational quantities or proportionals, together with all the 
irrational proportionals intervening between fig. A” as 
plus, and figs. A’ or B” or C” as minus quantities, and 
herefrom we also infer that figs. B” or C” are to be ac- 
counted the proportionals of such as fig. A” as well as 
figs. A” or A’. 
The knowledge of a law of formation includes all the 
facts created under the influence of that law, and lends to 
each of those facts the light of rational interpretation. 
If under one point of view we know it to be possible for 
fig. A’’, the archetype symbol of unity, to undergo meta- 
morphosis,* so as to represent fig. A” A’ or B”, we then 
know that all the plus anomalies of figs. B’ A’ or A” are 
but as approaches to the condition of the structural whole, 
and hereupon we discover that all minus quantities, what- 
ever be their condition in series, cannot be named as 
anomalous to the whole quantity, for we see that this con- 
tains an equal to any proportional of series, and just as 
a+6 may be said to contain a—0. 
When we would track the evidences of a law in nature, 
we do not need the assistance of nomenclature towards 
this end, for it is the form, not the name, which is the 
REMARKS ON THE FIGURES OF PLATE XVI. 
subject matter. While we understand that fig. B” is a 
proportional quantity of such an archetype as fig. A’, we 
feel that there is more substance in this account as tending 
to interpret the law of form+ than in continuing to 
analyse sound, or nomenclature, in order to determine 
which of the two figures A” or B” shall be named ver- 
tebra. For, after all, what is there in the name vertebra 
when used to characterise the thing fig. B’ or C” as a 
form which “turns,” except, indeed, it be meant that all 
the subject of comparative osteology turns to truth or 
error, according as we truthfully or erroneously interpret 
the design of its creation. It is in the ens, not in its 
name, that the science of its nature resides; and when we 
acknowledge thus much of the thing, it will matter little 
whether we choose rather to draw its sounding title forth 
from the catalogue of the Homeric ships, or rest contented 
with the name vertebra, as signifying the full meaning of 
the anatomical fact. The name is but a sound, whereas 
the subject which it too often falsely signifies is a creation 
by some natural law, which, if we could but discover its 
meaning, would always appear to encircle that creation 
like a luminous halo. The name is but a sound, and 
signifies no more in the Latin or the Greek than in the 
Patois, the Arabic, or the Hebrew. The name “Homo 
diluvii testis et Theoscopos” is painted upon a fossil 
salamander; and because it sounds of something, it is left 
to stand like other geological phrases, as if it expressed a 
truth in any other sense than that immortal error has a 
fixed place, by direct inheritance, in that temple where 
the student cannot, unless with an effort, consider the 
plain facts of Nature except through the “brouillard” of 
nomenclature and Scheuchzer, poetical licenses and pale- 
ontological void imaginings of the epochs of the world’s 
past history; through “cataclysms and catastrophies ;” 
through the “reptilian and carboniferous ages ;” through 
Nature in self-slaughter; through “the abortive gulph and 
void profound of unessential night ;” through “ Chaos, 
Phlegethon, and illimitable ocean ;’ through the “ eternal 
anarchy and noise of endless wars. of Tartarus and con- 
fusion ;” through “many a frozen, many a fiery alp, rocks, 
caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens and shades of death, a uni- 
verse of death;” “where all life dies, death lives, and 
Nature breeds, perverse, all monstrous all prodigious 
things, abominable, unutterable, and unkindly mized ;” 
through Milton, Whiston, Woodward, and cosmogenists ; 
through all who would rebel against the majesty of the 
following definition of the creative force—“ Qui sit ubique 
scilicet proesens, possitque voluntate sua corpora omnia in 
infinito suo wniformi sensorio movere.” tf 
* When we recognise the presence of a whole quantity as unity or the archetype, and discover in its own dimensions the equals of 
all those proportional quantities which stand in series with this whole ;—when, again, we admit the evidence of a law of degradation, 
and know how possible it is to metamorphose an archetype proportionally, then it is that we may also safely conclude that every proportional 
of series is part of an archetype or whole quantity. 
It is not possible for the law of metamorphosis or degradation to fashion a whole 
from a proportional. But it is within the pale of possibility for it to fashion any proportional from a whole. When we view a whole quantity 
in presence of the law of metamorphosis, we then give space and material for the exercise of a law of Nature, and thus runs the bearing 
of the following sentence :—“ Mais la Nature n’aurait pas pu les diversifier ainsi a Vinfini, si elle n’avait pas un espace suffisant dans lequel 
elle puisse si jouer, pour ainsi dire, sans sortir des limites de la loi."—Goethe—Giuores d Histoire Naturelle, page 42. 
+ “Natura non facit saltus."—Linneus—Systema Nature. 
“ La Nature ne va jamais par sauts.’— Buffon, tome xiv. page 12. 
~ Newton—Optice. Sive de Reflex, &c., page 412, in edit. 8. Clarke. 
