On the anterior portion of the face we find the nasal bones, which, articulating with the frontal on one side, circumscribe, on the other, the posterior border of the nares. The nasal bone of the one side is separated from that of the opposite by the intermaxillary or premaxillary bone, which forms the skeleton of the superior mandible.
The superior maxillaries, which are rudimentary, are situated on the lateral parts, and prolonged backward by an osseous style which articulates with the quadrate bone; this styloid bone, the homologue of the malar, is designated by certain authors as the jugal or quadrato-jugal bone.
It is with the quadrate bone also that the inferior maxillary articulates.
CHAPTER II
MYOLOGY
The first point to decide in commencing this study is the order in which we shall consider the different muscles which we have to examine. It must not be forgotten that in the present work we compare the organization of animals with that of man, which we already know, and that it is on the construction of this latter that, in these studies, the thought must at each instant be carried back in order to establish this comparison. Now, the general tendency which we notice in our teaching of anatomy, when one regards the region of the trunk in the human figure (a living model or a figure in the round), is first to consider the anterior aspect. It is the latter that, for this reason, we study at the very beginning; we next deal with the posterior surface of the trunk, because it is opposite; lastly, the lateral surfaces, because they unite with the preceding surfaces, the one to the other.
In studying an animal, it is usually by one of its lateral aspects that one first observes it; it is, in fact, by these aspects that it presents its greatest dimensions, and that the morphological characters as a whole can be more readily appreciated. Hence, possibly, the order of description adopted in most texts, or in the figures which accompany them. The first representation of the human figure as a whole, in a treatise on anatomy, represents the anterior aspect; the first view of the horse as a whole, in a treatise on veterinary anatomy, for example, is, on the other hand, a lateral view.
We break with this latter custom, and, without taking into account the tendency above indicated, we will commence our analysis with the study of the aspect of the trunk, which corresponds to the anterior aspect of the same region in man.