Anatomy, Artistic; Animals in art; Zoological illustration
The hyoid bone in quadrupeds is situated between the two rami or
branches of the lower jaw. Owing to this disposition, the region above
this bone, instead of having its surface projecting a little beyond the
inferior border of the maxillary bone, is depressed. This is especially
so in the horse. It is there that we find in this animal the region
known as the _trough_ (_auge_); the larynx corresponds to that part
known as the _gullet_.
The muscles which occupy the infrahyoid region are: the sterno-thyroid,
the sterno-hyoid, and the omo-hyoid. There is also a thyro-hyoid, but
because of its deep situation and its slight importance it offers no
interest from our point of view.
=Sterno-thyroid and the Sterno-hyoid Muscles.=--These two muscles, long,
narrow, and flat, arise from the anterior extremity of the sternum;
then, covering the anterior surface of the trachea, they proceed to
terminate, the one on the thyroid cartilage, and the other on the hyoid
bone. The sterno-hyoid is superficial; it covers the sterno-thyroid,
which, however, projects a little on its outer side.
=Omo-hyoid.=--This muscle does not exist in the dog or cat. It arises,
in the horse, from the cervical border of the scapula, where it blends
with the aponeurosis that envelops the subscapularis muscle, but in the
pig and the ox it arises from the deep surface of the mastoido-humeral
muscle. It is directed obliquely upwards and inwards, becoming
superficial at the internal border of the sterno-mastoid, and is
inserted into the hyoid bone.
The region in which are united the portion of the neck which we have
just studied and the neighbouring part of the thorax--that is, the
breast--has certainly, in our opinion, a form less expressive than the
corresponding region in man.
In the latter, indeed, the fourchette of the sternum, with the
hollow which it determines, the heads of the clavicles, and the
sterno-cleido-mastoid muscles, by the elevations which they produce, and
the trachea, by the situation which it occupies in the inferior part,
constitute a whole in which are admirably indicated, not only the forms
of the organs which constitute this region, but also the relations which
these organs have one with another; and, to a certain extent, their
respective functions.
In making an exception in the case of the ox, in which a fold of skin,
the _dewlap_, which passes from the neck to the breast, constitutes an
element of form which possesses some expressive value; in the horse and
in the dog, which possess no sternal fourchette and no heads of
clavicles, the bones and the muscles are found nearly on the same plane.
This produces a uniformity which is evidently inferior, from an
æsthetic point of view, to the modelling of the corresponding region of
the human body. Such, at least, is our impression.
Suprahyoid Muscles
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