248 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



shrunken," not filling the interior cavity, where its place was sup- 

 plied, as is usual in such cases, by serum or water. There is no 

 known method whereby any man can determine whether brain or 

 water fills the greater part of any living skull. A small orange may 

 have a thin rind, and contain a good amount of eatable substance, 

 while a large one may have so thick a skin that the fruit proves 

 utterly disappointing. 



Another proof that the skull is formed without regard to the 

 brain is the following: " The bony cabinet and its contents are de- 

 veloped, to a certain extent at least, independently. This is very 

 clearly demonstrated by a fact which was observed by Gratiolet, and 

 is too frequently forgotten. The subject is an infant in whom the 

 cranium presented the normal conformation. The brain was, never- 

 theless, almost entirely wanting." * 



Dr. Gall was a poor arithmetician, and his biographer says that 

 every kind of numerical calculation fatigued him. He could not go 

 through a process of multiplication or division that was at all com- 

 plicated, and knew nothing of geometry or of the problems of 

 mathematics. f George Combe said of himself: "Arithmetic has 

 always been to me a profound mystery, and to master the multiplica- 

 tion table an insurmountable task. . . . This faculty in me is, in fact, 

 idiotic." Again he said: "When a boy, I never could learn arith- 

 metic. At the end of five years' teaching I could not subtract, 

 divide, or multiply any considerable number of figures with accuracy 

 and facility, and can not now do so. . . . At the present day I can 

 not sum a column of figures correctly." % 



With these facts in view, our wonder at finding the theories of 

 these men at variance with all exact calculation is considerably 

 diminished. We propose to test some of their theories by arith- 

 metical processes. We found that the sixty famous men entered in 

 the table of authenticated brain weights show an average of 51.3 

 ounces. We now take all the idiots and imbeciles in the table of 

 " Large Brains and Small Minds," and find the average 59.4 ounces; 

 so that the matter is left to stand thus: Ten idiots and five imbeciles 

 average 59.2 ounces; sixty famous men average 51.39 ounces: in 

 favor of idiocy and imbecility, 7.9 ounces. 



The heaviest brain in the table of small minds is that of Rustan, 

 an ignorant and entirely unknown laborer. He was a healthy man, 

 and his brain, when it was weighed, was in a healthy condition. Its 

 weight was recorded by Dr. Carl A. Rudolphi, a Swedish naturalist 



* The Human Species. By A. De Quatrefages. D. Appleton and Company, New 

 York, 1884, p. 380. 



f Dr. Gall's works, Boston, Massachusetts, vol. i, p. 36. 

 % Life of George Combe, London, 1878, vol. ii, p. 381. 



