crucifying appurtenances, are but precariously made out in the granadilla or flower of Christ's passion: and we despair to behold in these parts that handsome draught of crucifixion in the fruit of the Barbado pine. The seminal spike of phalaris, or great shaking grass, more nearly answers the tail of a rattle-snake, than many resemblances in Porta. And if the man orchis* of Columna be well made out, it excelleth all analogies. In young walnuts cut athwart, it is not hard to apprehend strange characters; and in those of somewhat elder growth, handsome ornamental draughts about a plain cross. In the root of osmond or water-fern, every eye may discern the form of a half-moon, rainbow, or half the character of pisces. Some find Hebrew, Arabick, Greek, and Latin characters in plants; in a common one among us we seem to read Acaia, Viviu, Lilil.

Right lines and circles make out the bulk of plants. In the parts thereof we find heliacal or spiral roundles, volutas, conical sections, circular pyramids, and frustrums of Archimedes. And cannot overlook the orderly hand of nature, in the alternate succession of the flat and narrower sides in the tender shoots of the ash, or the regular inequality of bigness in the five-leaved flowers of henbane, and something like in the calicular leaves of tutson. How the spots of persicaria do manifest themselves between the sixth and tenth rib. How the triangular cap in the stem or stylus of tulips doth constantly point at three outward leaves. That spicated flowers do open first at the stalk. That white

*Orchis Anthropophora, Fabii Columnæ.

rootes of plants resembling sometimes orderly shapes and figures; those are made according as the pores or ascending fibres are posited in the plants. Wherby alimental juce and stablishing fibre ascend. The brake makes an handsome figure of a tree; the osmund royall a semicircle or raynebowe; the sedge a neate print; the annual surcles of the oake a five poynted starre according to the figure of the twigge; the stalk of the figge a triangle; carrots and many other a flosculous figure; the first rudiments of the sprouts of pyonie give starres of an handsome posie; the budds of plants with large leaves and many flowers cutt, show the artificiall complications in a wonderfull

manner.

5 heliacal.] Like a helix.

6 tutson.] See Mr. Hervey's ingenious interpretations of the curious structure of the passion-flower. Reflections on a Flower Garden.—Jeff.

flowers have yellow thrums or knops. That the nib of beans and peas do all look downward, and so press not upon each other. And how the seeds of many pappous or downy flowers locked up in sockets after a gomphosis or mortisearticulation, diffuse themselves circularly into branches of rare order, observable in tragopogon or goats-beard, conformable to the spider's web, and the radii in like manner telarly interwoven.

And how in animal natures, even colours hold correspondencies, and mutual correlations. That the colour of the caterpillar will show again in the butterfly, with some latitude is allowable. Though the regular spots in their wings seem but a mealy adhesion, and such as may be wiped away, yet since they come in this variety, out of their cases, there must be regular pores in those parts and membrances, defining such exudations.9

That Augustus had native notes on his body and belly, after the order and number in the stars of Charles' wain, will not seem strange unto astral physiognomy, which accordingly considereth moles in the body of man; or physical observators, who from the position of moles in the face, reduce them to rule and correspondency in other parts. Whether after the like method medical conjecture may not be raised upon parts inwardly affected; since parts about the lips are the critical seats of pustules discharged in agues; and scrofulous tumours about the neck do so often speak the like about the mesentery, may also be considered.

The russet neck in young lambst seems but adventitious, and may owe its tincture to some contaction in the womb: but, that if sheep have any black or deep russet in their faces, they want not the same about their legs and feet; that

8

*Suet. in vit. Aug.

pappous.] Downy.

† Which afterwards vanisheth.

9 though the regular spots in their wings seem but a mealy adhesion, &c.] The use of the microscope had not become sufficiently general among naturalists, at the time this tract was composed, to enable them to acquire a knowledge of the true nature of the scales which cover the wings of the lepidopterous insects, constituting this "mealy adhesion.” These beautiful though minute scales form part of the essential organization of the animals invested with them, and consequently must be as definite in their relations as any other portion of their economy.-Br.

black hounds have mealy mouths and feet; that black cows which have any white in their tails, should not miss of some in their bellies; and if all white in their bodies, yet if black mouthed, their ears and feet maintain the same colour ;are correspondent tinctures not ordinarily failing in nature, which easily unites the accidents of extremities, since in some generations she transmutes the parts themselves, while in the aurelian metamorphosis the head of the canker becomes the tail of the butterfly. Which is in some way not beyond the contrivance of art, in submersions and inlays, inverting the extremes of the plant, and fetching the root from the top, and also imitated in handsome columnary work, in the inversion of the extremes; wherein the capital, and the base, hold such near correspondency.

In the motive parts of animals may be discovered mutual proportions; not only in those of quadrupeds, but in the thigh-bone, leg, foot-bone, and claws of birds.2 The legs of

1 in the aurelian metamorphosis, &c.] This is a mistake. Browne must have made his observation on some species, the exterior of whose chrysalis he had misinterpreted; and thus, keeping watch on that part which he had erroneously decided to be occupied by the tail of the "canker," and seeing in due time the head of the butterfly make its appearance at that end, he came to his conclusion, without questioning the premises on which it was founded.

2 In the motive parts of animals may be discovered mutual proportions, &c.] That all the parts of animals, and especially those of the human frame, maintain in their dimensions a certain mutual relation among themselves, has long been generally known: indeed, the very fact of the bi-lateral symmetry in which the bodies of animals are obviously formed,-a symmetry especially observable in the Vertebrata and in the Annulosa, but lately shown, by Dr. Agassiz (Lond. and Edinb. Phil. Mag. vol. v. p. 369) to characterize also the Radiata, such as the starfish and the echinus,-would alone be sufficient to demonstrate the existence of such mutual proportions.

A very few numerical relations, however, and those almost confined to the human frame, had been definitely made out, though many obscure notions on the subject had been floating in the minds of physiologists and natural historians, until the reading before the Linnæan Society, in April, 1830, of a paper by Dr. Walter Adam, of Edinburgh, on the osteological symmetry of the camel, Camelus Bactrianus, Linn. The objects of this paper (Trans. of Linn. Soc. vol. xvi. p. 525-585), the author states in his exordium, are, to state correctly the dimensions of the several bones of a large quadruped; to trace the mutual relations of those dimensions; and thus to exemplify the general osteological form in animals of similar configuration. Agreeably to these

spiders are made after a sesqui-tertian proportion, and the long legs of some locusts, double unto some others. But objects, he details the proportionate dimensions of the bones constituting the skeleton of the camel (designating the bones according to the anatomical nomenclature of Dr. Barclay), in the following order; viz. the head; the vertebræ, classified in the usual manner; the sacrum; the tail; the ribs; the cavity of the thorax, and the sternum; the scapula; the pelvis, and the limbs. The various proportions are minutely exhibited in a series of tables, which occupies forty-seven quarto pages. The height, the breadth, and the basilar length of the cranium, Dr. Adam states, are very nearly in the proportion of 1, 2, 4. The common difference in the palatal, the coronal, the basilar, and the extreme length of the cranium, is the breadth of the cranium at the temporal fossæ; these lengths, in the animal examined, being, respectively, 12, 15, 18, 21, inches. The lateral extent of the atlas is equal to the distance between the inner margins of the orbits. The greatest elevation of the spine is at the third dorsal vertebra; the extreme length of that bone equalling the greatest extent of the pelvis towards the mesial plane. The longest of the twelve ribs are the seventh and the eighth; their length equals the greatest extent of the scapula. The sum of the lengths of the twelve ribs is about ten times that of the longest rib. The dimensions of the cavity of the chest agree with those of the separate bones of the body; thus, the greatest width of the chest is equal to the greatest length of the head. The breadths of the pelvis rostrad (measured towards the front), from the acetabula, are even numbers of proportional parts: its breadths, caudad (measured towards the tail), from the acetabula, including the acetabula breadth, itself, are odd numbers of proportional parts. The chief dimensions of the pelvis are identical with the chief dimensions of the head; thus, for example, the greatest dimension of the pelvis, being through the mesial plane, is equal to the greatest length of the head. The lengths of the four long bones of the atlantial (fore) limbs, independent of processes and elevations, are consecutively as the numbers 22, 28, 20, 6,- -sum 76. The similar lengths of the four long bones of the sacral (hind) limbs are consecutively as the numbers 28, 23, 20, 5,-sum 76. These relations are selected in order to impart to the reader some idea of the results of Dr. Adam's valuable observations: for the others, equally remarkable, and very considerable in number, the reader is referred to the original memoir. Dr. Adam concludes the general statement of his results with the following summary. "From what has been now stated, it appears that throughout. the dimensions of the bones of the Bactrian camel there is such an agreement, that many of the dimensions are continued proportionals, and that the mutual relations of nearly all admit of a very simple expression.

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Corresponding relations have been found to prevail in the bones of every species of animal examined by the writer of this paper. The prosecution of his investigations has been thwarted by unforeseen obstacles. Under more favourable circumstances, should what has been observed in the camel be fully verified in other animals, it will result :

the internodial parts of vegetables, or spaces between the joints, are contrived with more uncertainty; though the

"1. That though the hardness and durability of bones peculiarly fit them for enquiries similar to that detailed in these pages; yet as the bones always arise from, and are moulded by the softer tissues, the whole organic system is determinable in its proportions.

"2. That the relation of the forms of extinct animals to the forms of animals now living, the affinities of species and genera,-the simultaneous growth of the parts of the same animal, and the rates of such growth comparatively in other animals; the improvement of domestic races, even the structure and development of the human frame,—are all matters both of physiological and of numerical study.

"3. That zoology is, to an equal extent with the departments of knowledge that regard inanimate things, susceptible of a classification established on the sure basis of number."

In 1833 and 1834, Dr. Adam communicated to the Royal Society, two papers extending his observations to the osteology of the human subject of these, which have not yet been published, the only printed notices have been given in the Lond. and Edinb. Phil. Mag. vol. iii. p. 457, and vol. vi. p. 57. In these papers, which relate to the comparative osteological forms in the adult European male and female of the human species, he gives the results of a great number of measurements of the dimensions of the different bones composing the adult human skeleton, in the male and in the female sex respectively; and he also gives linear representations of various dimensions of the bones, both male and female, with a view to facilitate the comparison of the human frame with that of other animals, and reduce it to definite laws. He states that many of the rectilinear dimensions of human bones appear to be multiples of one unit, namely, the breadth of the cranium directly over the external passage of the ear; a dimension which he has found to be the most invariable in the body. No division of that dimension was found by Dr. Adam, to measure the other dimensions so accurately as that by seven, or its multiples. Of such seventh parts there appear to be twelve in the longitudinal extent of the back, and ninety-six in the height of the whole body. Adopting a scale of which the unit is half a seventh, or the 14th part of this line, being generally about the third of an inch, he states at length, in multiples of this unit, the dimensions, in different directions, of almost every bone in the skeleton ; noting more especially the differences that occur in those of the two sexes. The conclusion which he deduces from his enquiry is, that every bone in the body exhibits certain modifications, according to the sex of the individual. To this summary of the results obtained by Dr. Adam, I will only add, that there are many reasons, a priori, both psychological and physiological, why such relations as have been observed by him both in animals and in man, should be expected, or rather should be certainly believed, to have existence. To notice more particularly one point: that every bone in the human body, and indeed every organ and anatomically constituent part, must differ in the sexes, however