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nydus/On Growth and FormPublic
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Table of Contents

CHAPTER XVII ON THE THEORY OF TRANSFORMATIONS, OR THE COMPARISON OF RELATED FORMS

became transformed into curves with the concavity upwards, are curved, in the case of the horse, in the opposite direction. And the vertical ordinates, which are also curved, somewhat in the same fashion as in the tapir, are very nearly equidistant, instead of being, as in that animal, crowded together anteriorly. Ordinates and abscissae form an oblique {764} system, as is shown in the figure. In this case I have attempted to produce the network beyond the region which is actually required to include the diagram of the horse〙s skull, in order to show better the form of the general transformation, with a part only of which we have actually to deal.

A D'Arcy Thompson transformation grid showing the deformation of a horse skull silhouette.
A diagram from D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's On Growth and Form, showing a skull outline distorted by a curved coordinate grid.

It is at first sight not a little surprising to find that we can pass, by a cognate and even simpler transformation, from our Perissodactyle skulls to that of the rabbit; but the fact that we can easily do so is a simple illustration of the undoubted affinity which exists between the

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