REMARKS ON THE FIGURES OF PLATE XXIV. 
THE CERVICAL AND LUMBAR REGIONS COMMENCE AND TERMINATE BY THE SUBTRACTION OF QUANTITY 
FROM THE PLUS ARCHETYPE. 
} ESIGN, as occurring by the operation of a natural law, may be contemplated under two modes of 
ideas, each leading to a special appreciation of the actual result. First, we can consider the creation 
which presents to us, as a form perfect in itself, as a mechanical fitness which wants not the addition of 
any part to render it more complete, and which holds nothing superfluous. Secondly, we may estimate its 
present design as a figure, created by a law of formation from another original figure or prime model, and 
compared with which, we can now learn to place full value on the existing speciality. Under this latter 
mode we here track the law of design which yields the mammalian spinal series as a special creation. The 
self-evident proposition of created mechanical fitness manifested by a cervical and lumbar series, has already 
had an universal anatomical acknowledgement, and this needs no further comment. But there is no doubt 
that comparative science seeks for some further demonstration of a law of formation, or that process of creation 
which fills the eye with the theme of unity, and, at the same time, transcends all account of unity by the 
inexhaustible infinitude of special and various detail. The mammalian skeleton series is. not unity or 
uniformity, compared either to itself or to other species. It is a special design amidst the infinity of 
specialities, and has its archetype or original from whose plus form it is as a subtracted quantity. It is 
a figure designed by the loss of quantity. It is a fitness on account of that loss, and, as such, is to be valued 
only by holding it in comparison with its archetype, which is plus uniformity. 
A costo-vertebral archetype is the plus quantity of series. 
A vertebra, wherever it stands in series with such an 
archetype plus, must be interpreted as the minus propor- 
tional of such another plus, consequently the cervical 
and lumbar regions of series must be accounted minus, 
compared with the thoracic region of the same series; and 
_ for the same reason, are to be interpreted as regions ren- 
dered proportionally minus from their own plus quantity. 
This quantity is of the thoracic stamp, and this idea is 
equal to the original uniformity of serial archetype quanti- 
ties ranging throughout the whole length of the spinal axis. 
When we compare the present condition of the spinal 
series of minus and plus quantities with the original series 
of plus quantities, then we interpret the present design of 
Nature with her own prime model, and this is a series of 
costo-vertebral thoracic forms holding an unbroken order 
from first to last. 
When Nature creates the mammal cervix, consisting of 
seven vertebra, she may be said to have rendered seven 
archetypes at the commencement of series, minus or of 
vertebral formation. When we observe that those seven 
cervical vertebre are homologous quantities, then we inter- 
pret the law of their formation to be as follows, viz.: that 
Nature has subtracted equal quantities from equal arche- 
type figures, and left equal proportionals such as cervical 
vertebree standing. But when we meet with a human 
cervix, producing cervical coste, from the autogenous 
pieces of the cervical transverse processes, then we say 
that Nature has subtracted unequal quantities from the ori- 
ginally equal archetypes, and left remaining cervical. units 
which are unequal to one another; still, this costal inequality 
of the cervical forms is only the inequality of proportioning 
from the original figures of the archetypes. How else 
can the creation of cervical ribs be rationally accounted 
for ? 
Fig. A represents the cervical region of the human spinal 
series. In the seventh cervical spinal unit we see the 
autogenous element, marked a, holding series with the 
first thoracic costa marked @; and the same autogenous 
element is to be found in all the cervical vertebra. It is 
