~ 
—y 
REMARKS ON THE FIGURES OF PLATE XVIII. Ee | 3° 
_ rigorous investigations of mathematical law, surely it need 
not be applied to comparative osteology, especially if we 
may, by the spontaneity of.a quick conviction sufficient for 
anatomical truth, already know that fig. B” is the whole 
or rational quantity, that fig. B’ is a proportional of the 
- Tike quantity, and that the irrational numbers or quanti- 
ties between plus and its proportional are such as we have 
marked them in the points of the circle d “of 2 BA 
though perhaps not numerously enough. 
If, therefore, the law of species, as pursued by the dif- 
_ ferential method be a theme which dates from the Stagy- 
rite,* and in all probability will, if pursued in this spirit 
_ for three thousand years hence, be still the same. If its 
proper emblem be the “quadrature of the circlé,” so far as 
itis not worth one jot to comparative anatomy, whose sole 
object is to know of the whole quantity of unity, and to 
understand how the metamorphosed figures of this may be 
infinite, as species are infinite, in such case we say that it | 
is the law of metamorphosis to which unity is subjected, 
just as it is the law of motion to which matter is subjected, 
which must become the theme of limitation. And in this’ 
| understanding, we shall name fig. B” as the symbol a+4 
which quantity, when 6 shall be subtracted from it, will 
become fig. B’, which we shall know hereafter by the sym- . 
bol a—8, and so of all the plus and minus quantities of 
the series. 
* In ancient Athens, as in modern Paris, the differential method has been pursued only to the same result, viz., the parallelism of plus 
and minus figures, with still the disputed questions of unity and variety. “Since some of them differ in the more and the less with respect 
to man, and man differs in the more and the less with respect to many animals. —(Aristotle,—History of Animals, book viii. chap. i.) “ Car, 
allant d’une espéce a l’autre, il fait chaque fois appel de tous les materiaux, et met sur le compte des différences, /’absence ou Vatrophie des uns, 
let Ehypertrophie des autres. ”—Geof. St. Ehiaire sere de Philos. ae Disc. Prelim. p. 12. 
