imaginative theory of the skull as modified vertebrae, logically
complete down to a strict parallel between the subsidiary head-bones and
the limbs attached to the spine, outran the facts of a definite
structure common to all vertebrates which he had observed. ("Following
up Rathke, he strove to substitute for the then dominant fantastic
doctrines of the homologies of the cranial elements advocated by Owen,
sounder views based on embryological evidence. He exposed the futility
of attempting to regard the skull as a series of segments, in each of
which might be recognised all the several parts of a vertebra, and
pointed out the errors of trusting to superficial resemblances of shape
and position. He showed, by the history of the development of each,
that, though both skull and vertebral column are segmented, the one and
the other, after an early stage, are fashioned on lines so different as
to exclude all possibility of regarding the detailed features of each as
mere modifications of a type repeated along the axis of the body. 'The
spinal column and the skull start from the same primitive condition,
whence they immediately begin to diverge.' 'It may be true to say that
there is a primitive identity of structure between the spinal or
vertebral column and the skull; but it is no more true that the adult
skull is a modified vertebral column than it would be to affirm that the
vertebral column is modified skull.' This lecture marked an epoch in
England in vertebrate morphology, and the views enunciated in it carried
forward, if somewhat modified, as they have been, not only by Huxley's
subsequent researches and by those of his disciples, but especially by
the splendid work of Gegenbauer, are still, in the main, the views of
the anatomists of to-day."--Sir M. Foster, Royal Society Obituary Notice
of T.H. Huxley.)

With the demolition of Oken's theory fell the superstructure raised by
its chief supporter, Owen, "archetype" and all.