REMARKS ON THE FIGURES OF PLATE XXXIV. 
THE MINUS AND PLUS QUANTITIES OCCUPY THE SAME MEDIAN LINE, AND HENCE ARH BILATERALLY 
CLEAVABLE BY THAT LINE. 
REATION is serial and graduated. Examples of sudden transformation are nowhere to be found. 
In Nature all proceeds by easy degrees, and her linear series is an actual evidence of her mode 
of creation. The serial line of an entire animal kingdom is one of gradation, and the slow moving 
process of metamorphosis by infinitesimal degrees of change, demonstrates the solemn majesty of 
Nature’s paces. The serial order of the phantasma—time, points to its embodied symbol in the 
serial order of created form, for as the present moment follows the last and is ‘succeeded by the 
next without perceptible change, so does any one form of series stand related to two others placed 
immediately on either side itself, without any perceptible manifestation of specific variation between 
them. Striking contrasts are only to be found between individuals which occupy the extremes of 
the serial line. The polype and the elephant are examples of this broad contrast between 
entities which stand at opposite extremes of the continued but graduated chain of animal nature. 
The mammalian skeleton series is a brief abstract representative of the same law of Nature, and 
"may be contemplated as an emblem or type created under the operation of the same universal 
process of gradation. The continuity of the animal chain is maintained throughout without saltus or 
hiatus, and as we follow it from excess to defect, we mark that it vanishes by slow degrees till it 
becomes lost in the invisible microcosm. A. slow gradation from plus to minus quantity characterises 
the skeleton series also, and as this process takes place symmetrically, it leaves the minus form 
in possession of the same median line which the plus figure elsewhere occupies. The last caudal 
quantity is bicleavable with the same line which severs through its centre the thoracic costo-vertebral 
archetype. 
The mammalian skeleton axis is still symmetrically 
developed, even when its thoracic units describe the 
thoracic circles from the median line posteriorly to the 
sternal median line in front. : 
Tn fig. A the median line is seen to divide the entire serial 
structure from vertex to the last caudal bone, and although 
the line is seen to pass through osseous quantity im front 
of the form (such quantity as sternal structure) which 
exists at the thoracic region, and is lost at the cervical 
and lumbar regions of series, still this does not interfere 
with the symmetrical fact of skeleton design. For still 
the thoracic quantities appear symmetrical, having every. 
elemental part of one side repeated on the opposite side, 
and the same common median line which symmetrically 
severs the thorax from the sternal front to the vertebral 
dorsum, is seen to pass through all these minus regions of 
series which are named the cervix, loins, sacrum, and 
caudex. ” 4s 
The same median line which passes through the centre 
of created thoracic quantity, passes also through the 
centre of the cervical’ and lumbar, &c., regions, where 
quantity is known to be lost. Whatis the meaning of 
this? Surely it can be no other than that those minus 
regions of series named neck and loins have had their 
costal quantities subtracted from them, for even now the 
common median line of series divides all regions of that 
series, whether plus or minus, into symmetrical sides; nor 
would this character of bilateral symmetry be lost, even if 
