46 



CON AUIO-HYPOPHYSIAL TRACT. 



But now I am driven to ask, Why did Cuvier refuse to 

 extend his views, w^hether homological or analogical, of the 

 answerable parts of the brain in Vertebrates and Invertebrates 

 beyond the " supraoesophageal " mass or ganglion in Mollusks 

 and Articulates? Because, unlike Hunter, he declined to 

 extend those views in relation to the Vertebrate and Inver- 

 tebrate encephalic centres beyond or below the higher order 

 of Cephalopoda; and he logically pronounced, at the con- 

 clusion of his admirable anatomical monograph of the 

 *'Poulpe" [Octopus vulgaris), that the class of which it was 

 the type — my Cephalopoda Dibranchiata — formed not the 

 passage to any other group, and that they have not resulted 

 from the development of other animals, and that their own 

 development has produced nothing superior to them*. It 

 must be remembered, however, that the transitional modifi- 

 cations of the Tetrabranchiate Cephalopods had not at that 

 date been made known. 



If, -however, the cerebral homologies may be traced, Avith 

 the guidance of the Pearly Nautilus, through the still lower, 

 more simplified MoUusca, notwithstanding their retaining 

 more of the lower and primitive circumoral type, my next 

 contention is that those homologies may be predicated of the 

 modifications of the brain in the Articulata. 



So plain, so obvious, indeed, seem to me the grounds for 

 such homologies, that I should have shrunk from urging 

 them before my fellow-labourers in Zootomy were not views 

 very analogous to the restricted ones of Cuvier maintained 

 and asserted by the accomplished and experienced compara- 

 tive anatomist, especially of Invertebrate animals, in the 

 United Sates, to whose valuable Monograph f I have already 

 referred. 



* * Memoire siir le Poulpe,' op. cit. p. 43. 

 t Ante, p. 33. 



