Page:Natural History Review (1861).djvu/219

Rh there figured, enables us to apply the second canon to the several marks of degradation spoken of, as diminution of upward and of lateral growth in the frontal and the occipital lobes. The even regular curve, indeed, of the skull, and its narrowing tapering frontal and occipital regions, as seen in the lower races, would have led us to anticipate some such cerebral conformation as the unhappily all but unique specimen of such a brain as the one just referred to actually discloses to us.

The foramina for the nerves in the skulls of the lower races of mankind have been said by certain ethnologists to present larger diameters than the similar foramina in the basis of the skull of higher races; and if this be really the case, our first canon will come to apply to our ninth point of difference, the larger relative size, namely, of the nerves in the simious brain.

The three points of diminution in downward development of the posterior lobes, and in both downward and in antero-posterior development of the frontal, remain unaffected by the application of either canon. Of their value our figures will enable the reader to judge for himself.

After comparing our single brain of the chimpanzee with the two of the orang we possess in our Museum, we cannot see that the African ape contrasts in any one of these nine points to disadvantage with the Asiatic.

Under our second head—that, namely, of the differences which weighing and measuring enable us to enucleate as existing between the several subjects of our comparison—we have eight points of difference to enumerate. When it is not otherwise specified, the measurements of the human brain were taken from a brain of a German of average intelligence, the brain having recently been brought to the museum and presenting nothing peculiar, in the way either of under or of over development, to render it unfit to serve as a standard of comparison to the brain of the orang. Both sets of measurements were taken at the same time.

The entire weight of the orang's body being 161b. 12 oz., the weight of the brain was 12 oz. The relation of the weight of the brain to that of the body was, therefore, as 1 : 22.3.

I find recorded by Huschke a set of observations analogous to these. They were made upon a child of six years of age. The child was a girl, dying emaciated of pleuro-bronchitis—

The brain : the body = 1 : 11.