On the intimate structure of bone, as composing the skeleton in the four great classes of animals, mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes : with some remarks on the great value of the knowledge of such structure in determining the affinities of minute fragments of organic remains / by John Quekett.

  • Quekett, John, 1815-1861.
Date:
[1846]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the intimate structure of bone, as composing the skeleton in the four great classes of animals, mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes : with some remarks on the great value of the knowledge of such structure in determining the affinities of minute fragments of organic remains / by John Quekett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    17/31 (page 15)
    Additional Observations on the Intimate Structure of Bone. By John Qdekett, Assistant Conservator of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. (Read November 11, 1846). In a paper which I laid before this Society at the meeting held March 18th, 1846, entitled, On the Intimate Structure of Bone, as composing the Skeleton in the four great Classes of Animals, viz., Mammals, Birds, Reptiles, and Fishes, with some Remarks on the great Value of the Knowledge of such Structure in determining the Affinities of Minute Fragments of Organic Remains, after describing briefly the various parts of which the shaft of a long bone of the Mammalia is composed, viz., 1st, a central or medullary cavity,— 2ndly, a series of small canals (Haversian), around which are arranged concentric laminsD of bony matter,— 3rdly, of a concentric arrange- ment of spider-like looking bodies, which have been variously termed osseous corpuscles, calcigerous cells, lacunae or bone-cells, each cell having little tubes or canals, termed canaliculi, proceeding from them,—I went on to show that the average length of the bone-cells in the human subject was about Ws-oth of an inch, that they were of an oval foiTn, somewhat flattened on their opposite surfaces, and usually one-third greater in thickness than in breadth; that the bones of birds were all more or less hollow, and the Haversian canals much smaller and more numerous than in Mammalia, that the bone-cells also were of much smaller size, and their long diameters often placed at right angles with the shaft of the bone; that in the Reptilia the Haversian canals are large and not numerous, but the bone-cells and their canaliculi are remarkable for their very large size, whilst in fishes the Haversian canals were entirely absent in some bones, and abundant in others: when entirely absent, their place appeared to be supplied by bone-cells which presented several pecuHarities, serving to distinguish them from those of the mammal, the bird, or the reptile, .they being, for the most part, of a quadrate figure, and the canaliculi given off' from them but few in number, and readily seen to anastomose freely with the canaliculi from other cells. I then proposed to apply the characters derived from the bone-cells to the determination of the class of animals to which any minute fragment of fossil or other bone