Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/370

356 weight of the encephalon at the age of from five to seven to be forty-three ounces, ten drachms; from twenty to thirty, fifty ounces, nine and a half drachms. The female brain in the human species is generally lighter in mature years than the male by five ounces, or ten per cent, while her stature is only eight per cent less.

Dr. Peacock gives an average of one hundred and thirty-one male brains, between twenty-five and fifty-five years of age, as fifty ounces, three drachms. Dr. Austin Flint, of New York, estimates the male encephalon at 50·2 ounces. Dr. Thurman considers the average brain-weight of ordinary Europeans to be forty-nine ounces. This average may answer for Europe in general, but it would be too small for the colder regions, as shown by the averages of Dr. Reid and Dr. Peacock, taken in Edinburgh, as also it would be too little for New York, according to Dr. Flint.

In Italy, Greece, and Spain, the average is smaller than Dr. Thurman's, and in France, M. Bourgery finds the average weight of the male adult brain to be 46·6 ounces.

The average male brain-weights of different nations is given at—

We borrow the above table from Dr. Paul Topinard's "Anthropology," 1878, page 311.

To this we add the following average brain-weights, taken from the "Anthropological Review" of 1869, pages 190–192. If we compare the average weight of the African negro brains given in the above table with those of the full-blood negro brains taken from the one hundred and thirty-nine negroes raised in the United States of North America given below, it will be seen that the colder climate of the United States produces heavier brains in the negro than the warm climate of Africa:

Dr. A. Wiesbach, a famous investigator of brains in the Austrian Empire, states that the heaviest are found among the Czechs; those of the Roumani are somewhat lighter; the Magyars or Hungarians lighter still; yet their brains average eight grammes more than the Germans of this empire; while the Italians are the smallest of all, being about