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