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gical development, that the brain contains structures quite peculiar to itself, and differs from the spinal cord in kind as well as in size; but, at the same time, when the vertebral theory of the skull was inaugurated, embryological knowledge and the importance of its relation to anatomical structure were less considered. What Huxley did was to show that the skull, in its mode of origin and real nature, was not merely an expanded portion of the vertebral column, but that it differed from it in kind. The hypothesis of the vertebral structure of the skull was due both to Goethe, the great German poet, and Oken, a most able but somewhat mystic German anatomist. An attempt had been made by a well-known English anatomist to cast on Goethe the stigma of having tried to rob Oken of the credit for this theory. Huxley set that matter finally at rest, disproving and repelling with indignation the unworthy suggestion. Oken gave out his theory in 1807, and described how it had been first suggested to his mind by the accident of picking up a dried and battered sheep's skull, in which the apparent vertebral structure was very obvious, as, indeed, anyone may see at a glance. It was in 1820, long after the theory had been made current, that the poet first publicly narrated that in a similar way he had long before come to the same conclusion; but Huxley was able to show that, although announcing it later, Goethe had in reality anticipated the anatomist. A passage occurs in a letter to a friend, of a date in 1790, which admits of no doubt. "By the oddest happy chance, my servant picked up a bit of an animal's skull in the Jews' cemetery at Venice, and, by way of a joke, held it out to me as if he were offering me a Jew's skull. I have made a great step in the formation of animals." It is an interesting trait in Huxley's character, to find him zealous in defence of the reputation of a great man, even although that man had been dead more than half a century; but it may be added that his just zeal was at least stimulated by the fact that the maligner of Goethe was Owen, the conduct of whom, with regard to Darwin and Huxley, Huxley had had just reason for resenting. The theory, then, which had dropped stillborn from Goethe, but which Oken developed, was simply that the skull consisted of a series of expanded vertebrae. Each vertebra consists of a basal piece or centrum, the anterior and posterior faces of which are closely applied to th
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