Abstract
AMONG wants long felt, at least by animal morphologists, is some word that shall express for Invertebrata the idea that the word bone expresses for Vertebrata. Words such as skeleton, shell, test, and carapace express the whole structure, not the substance of which it is made. Words such as nacre and stereoplasm express some particular form of hard substance strictly defined from a physical or morphological stand-point. Sclerenchyma is the only word that has yet been used in anything like the required sense; but that is confined to corals, and, from its affinity with cænenchyma and the like, it is well that it should be so. Driven back on cumbrous periphrases, I therefore venture to suggest the adoption of the word Stereom (σтєρέωμα, that which has been made solid). This word was used by Aristotle (“De Anim. Part.,” ii. 9) for the hard as opposed to the soft tissues of the body, and may, for the purposes of modern science, be thus defined: any hard calcareous tissue forming skeletal structures in Metazoa Invertebrata, and in Protozoa.
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BATHER, F. Stereom. Nature 43, 345 (1891). https://doi.org/10.1038/043345b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/043345b0
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