[630] Dialogues concerning Two New Sciences (1638): Crew and Salvio’s translation, p. 140 seq.
[631] The form and direction of the vertebral spines have been frequently and elaborately described; cf. (e.g.) Gottlieb, H., Die Anticlinie der Wirbelsäule der Säugethiere, Morphol. Jahrb. LXIX, pp. 179–220, 1915, and many works quoted therein. According to Morita, Ueber die Ursachen der Richtung und Gestalt der thoracalen Dornfortsätze der Säugethierwirbelsäule (ibi cit. p. 201), various changes take place in the direction or inclination of these processes in rabbits, after section of the interspinous ligaments and muscles. These changes seem to be very much what we should expect, on simple mechanical grounds. See also Fischer, O., Theoretische Grundlagen für eine Mechanik der lebenden Körper, Leipzig, pp. 3, 372, 1906.
[632] I owe the first four of these determinations to the kindness of Dr Chalmers Mitchell, who had them made for me at the Zoological Society’s Gardens; while the great Clydesdale carthorse was weighed for me by a friend in Dundee.
[633] This pose of Diplodocus, and of other Sauropodous reptiles, has been much discussed. Cf. (int. al.) Abel, O., Abh. k. k. zool. bot. Ges. Wien, V. 1909–10 (60 pp.); Tornier, SB. Ges. Naturf. Fr. Berlin, pp. 193–209, 1909; Hay, O. P., Amer. Nat. Oct. 1908; Tr. Wash. Acad. Sci. XLII, pp. 1–25, 1910; Holland, Amer. Nat. May, 1910, pp. 259–283; Matthew, ibid. pp. 547–560; Gilmore, C. W. (Restoration of Stegosaurus). Pr. U.S. Nat. Museum, 1915.
[634] The form of the cantilever is much less typical in the small flying birds, where the strength of the pelvic region is insured in another way, with which we need not here stop to deal.
[635] The motto was Macquorn Rankine’s.
[636] John Hunter was seldom wrong; but I cannot believe that he was right when he said (Scientific Works, ed. Owen, I, p. 371), “The bones, in a mechanical view, appear to be the first that are to be considered. We can study their shape, connexions, number, uses, etc., without considering any other part of the body.”
[637] Origin of Species, 6th ed. p. 118.
[638] Amer. Naturalist, April, 1915, p. 198, etc. Cf. infra, p. 727.
[639] Driesch sees in “Entelechy” that something which differentiates the whole from the sum of its parts in the case of the organism: “The organism, we know, is a system the single constituents of which are inorganic in themselves; only the whole constituted by them in their typical order or arrangement owes its specificity to ‘Entelechy’ ” (Gifford Lectures, p. 229, 1908): and I think it could be shewn that many other philosophers have said precisely the same thing. So far as the argument goes, I fail to see how this Entelechy is shewn to be peculiarly or specifically related to the living organism. The conception that the whole is always something very different from its parts is a very ancient doctrine. The reader will perhaps remember how, in another vein, the theme is treated by Martinus Scriblerus: “In every Jack there is a meat-roasting Quality, which neither resides in the fly, nor in the weight, nor in any particular wheel of the Jack, but is the result of the whole composition; etc., etc.”