ARCHITECTURE AT MATURITY. 185 



TABLE 44. GIVING THE NUMBER OF CASES iw WHICH THE 

 HEMISPHERES WERE EQUAL IN WEIGHT, OR ONE OF THEM 

 IN EXCESS, IN A SERIES OF ITALIAN BRAINS WEIGHED BY 

 FRANCESCHi. 1 WEIGHTS WITHIN ONE GRAMME OR LESS 



ARE CALLED EQUAL. 



This table does not indicate any tendency of one 

 hemisphere to be constantly the heavier. So long as 

 the differences are as small as those here noted, and so 

 long as different observers obtain results directly 

 opposed to one another, as the first table shows, the 

 figures do not furnish a good basis for induction. That 

 the results of different observers are opposed is perhaps 

 to be explained by certain technical difficulties. When 

 it becomes a question of passing a knife through a brain 

 so as to divide it into two halves, there is found, in a 

 complicated form, the same difficulty that presents 

 itself on trying to divide a straight line into equal parts. 

 Experiments show that in the case of a right-handed 

 person attempting this division of the cerebrum by 

 drawing the knife from heel to point, the edge being 

 down, the tendency is to leave the larger portion of the 

 brain to the right-hand side of the blade. Thus it 

 would happen that if a perfectly symmetrical brain 

 were laid upon its ventral surface, with the frontal end 

 away from the operator, and the attempt made to 



Franceschi, Bull. d. Sc. Med. di Bologna, 1888. 



