Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1837 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER III. Tke Comparative Anatomy of the Hand. In this enquiry, we have placed before us what in the strictest sense of the word is a system. All the individuals of the extensive division of the animal kingdom which we are about to review, viz. the vertebrated animals, possess a cranium for the protection of the brain, --a heart, implying a peculiar circulation, --and five distinguishable organs of sense. But the grand peculiarity, whence the term vertebrated is derived, is to be found in the spine; that chain of bones which connects the head and body, and, like a keel, serves as the foundation of the ribs, or as the basis of the fabric through which respiration is performed. We are to confine ourselves, as we have said, to a portion only of this combined structure; to examine separately the anterior extremity, and to observe the adaptation of its parts, through the whole range of these animals. We shall view it as it exists in man, and in the higher division of animals which give suck, the mammalia--and in those which propagate by eggs, the oviparous animals, birds, reptiles, amphibia, and fishes. In so doing, we shall find the bones composing it identified by certain common features, and yet adjusted to various purposes, in all the series from the arm to the fin. We shall recognise the same bones formed in the mole into a powerful apparatus for digging, by which the animal soon covers itself, and burrows its way under ground. In the wing of the eagle we shall count every bone, and find that although adapted to a new element, they are as powerful to rise in the air, as the fin of the salmon is to strike through the water. The solid hoof of the horse, the cleft foot of the ruminant, the paw of the feline tribe with retractile claws, and.
