NATURAL HISTORY. 11 



travels are circumscribed by his native village, or, at most, 

 by a casual visit to the nearest market town, exhibits a mind 

 which has received a certain set of ideas, false as well as true, 

 and which refuses alike to admit new notions or to give up 

 any of the old. 



So great is the influence of society on the mind, that an 

 experienced clergyman, while examining some candidates for 

 Confirmation, observed that the Oxford children were two 

 years in advance of those of the same age who had been bred 

 in the country. So with music, a town child is accustomed 

 to hear street music, and readily catches the air, while the 

 country child, whose notions of music are confined tojtfhe 

 dismal hosannas and lugubrious psalmody of the village 

 church, is usually devoid of musical ear, but is great in imita- 

 tion of rooks, cows, pigs, and donkeys. 



The most perfect case of isolation known, was that of the 

 celebrated Kaspar Hauser, who had been confined for the 

 first fourteen or fifteen years of his life in a dark cave, and 

 was never permitted even to see his keeper. In consequence, 

 when he at length left his dungeon, his mind was that of an 

 infant, his body that of a man. It would have been a most 

 interesting and important experiment to watch the gradual 

 development of his mind, but, unfortunately for science, an 

 unknown dagger reached his heart, and this mysterious 

 victim of a hidden plot perished, leaving the riddle of his 

 life unsolved and the development of his intellect unfinished. 

 This furnishes us with another distinction between man and 

 beasts. "When the mind of Hauser was released from its 

 bands, it at once began to expand, and every day gave it 

 fresh powers. Not so with the ape, whose brain is rapidly 

 developed when young, and receives no further increase as it 

 grows in stature. 



SKULL OF MAN. 



