VERT

(Pr. vert, green.) In Heraldry, one of the colours or tinctures employed in blazonry. It is equivalent to emerald among precious stones, to Venus among planets. In engraving it is represented by diagonal lines from the devter to the sinister sides of tile escutcheon. VffRTEBR.fi. The bones of the spine. They are divided into true and false; the former constituting the upid the latter the lower portion of the spinal column. Tintrue vertebra: are farther divided into those of the neck, and loins; or the eerrien/. dorsal, and lumbar verteeven cervical vertebra;; the firstot which ru tiehead, and is called the atlas; the second is the dentata; it lias a tooth-like proce , forming a kind of pivot up in which the head rotates. The dorsal vertebra are tw he in number, and the lumbar vertebra: five. In the neck the spine projecis forwards; it is then curved backwards in the thorax, and in the loins again projects foriii elastic substance between the verteulniitting of a certain degree of motion; small be ihe individual bones, but considerable as affects the whole column. The vertebra;, and their projections or pronfford attachments lor a number of muscles and ligaments;and the spinal marrow is lodged in the bony canal which their several perforations form. VERTEBRATES, Vertebrate. (Lat. vertebra, a hove of the spine.) The name of a primary division of the animal kingdom, including those which have a cerebro-spinal nervous axis, protected by a bony cylinder composed of a sucn of Vertebra", which are expanded into a cranium, where they inclose the enlarged anterior or upper portion of the nervous avis, called the brain. See Zoology. VERTEX (Lat. the top), in Astronomy, is the point of the sphere directly overhead, more frequently called the zenith. The vertex of an ancle or a cone is the angular point, or that in which the sides of the angle or of the cone intersect. The vertex of a curve is the point in which the diameter meets the curve. [s. 1315]