264 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



see that no harm was done. Broca, says M. E. W. Brabrock, of the 

 Anthropological Institute, "liked to tell an amusing anecdote on the 

 subject of this supervision : The police officer acquitted himself of his 

 mission with so great regularity, and had got so much the habit of 

 sitting among the members, that he seemed soon to have forgotten 

 that he was there in a special capacity. Wishing one day to be able 

 to take a holiday with a clear conscience, he approached the officers 

 with an amiable smile, and addressed Broca : ' There will be nothing 

 interesting to-day, I suppose ? May I go ? ' ' No, no, my friend,' 

 Broca immediately replied, ' you must not go for a walk ; sit down 

 and earn your pay.' He returned to his place very unwillingly, and 

 never after ventured to ask a holiday from those he was set to look 

 after." 



The society held its first meeting May 19, 1859. When it was seen 

 at work, adhesions came fast ; and after it had published the first vol- 

 ume of its " Bulletins," and shown the exclusively scientific character 

 of its labors, the suspicions which it had excited before its birth began 

 to subside. The Minister of Public Instruction deigned at last to 

 authorize it in 1861, and three years afterward it was recognized as a 

 society of public utility. M. Broca, all agree, was the soul of this 

 society. Having founded it, he kept it alive during its perilous early 

 years by the prepondering interest of his incessant labors, and the com- 

 municative ardor of his devotion to the young science. He had the 

 faculty of grouping the most diverse, and, apparently, the most dis- 

 cordant, elements around his person ; the power to excite the zeal of 

 some, restrain the passion of others, and to exercise over all an author- 

 ity that was incontestable and uncontested, simply because it rested 

 solely upon his real superiority freely recognized by all. This influ- 

 ence of Broca, visible particularly at the beginning, continued no less 

 real till the last days of his life, notwithstanding he took pains to 

 avoid everything that might give him the appearance of a personal 

 direction. He was secretary of the society for the first three years, 

 and was accustomed to record its debates from memory after the meet- 

 ings were over, in a manner that heightened their original interest and 

 gave prominence to the central point of the debate. In 1863 the 

 growth of the society had made the office of a general secretary neces- 

 sary. Broca was elected to the position, and held it till his death. 



In 1861 Broca began his admirable researches on the brain. In a 

 series of four memoirs he gave reasons for the belief that the brain 

 was not, as many at the time thought, " an undivided organ in which 

 the different faculties have no determined seat," but that the funda- 

 mental convolutions of the cerebral hemispheres are distinct organs, 

 each having distinct functions. Performing an autopsy upon a man 

 who had been deprived of the faculty of speech for twenty years, he 

 was led, by a careful examination of the condition of his brain, to the 

 conviction that the primary seat of his affection w T as in the third con- 



