BRAIN WEIGHTS AND INTELLECTUAL CAPACITY. 253 



squat figure. . . . The convolutions were broad and simple, but not 

 shallow. The gray matter was as broad as usual." * 



The writer has examined many brains of persons morally or intel- 

 lectually below the average — such as murderers, negroes, and others 

 sunk in ignorance. He has invariably found the layer of vesicular 

 or gray matter to be thicker than that of Daniel "Webster's brain. 

 Elephants, porpoises, whales, dolphins, and the grampus all have this 

 layer thicker than the most intellectual men. Another great objec- 

 tion to locating mind in the gray matter of the brain is that this 

 substance is found in the interior part of the spinal cord, and in all 

 the nerve centers throughout the body; so that, if mind is situated in 

 it, it is not confined to the brain, but dwells in the spine also, 

 and is distributed all through the human frame. Still another 

 objection lies in the fact that wherever the gray matter exists near 

 the surface of the brain, it consists of three distinct layers, separated 

 by a white substance, and the outermost layer is white, not gray.f 



The septum lucidum consists of gray matter. The corpus stria- 

 tum, situated at the base of the lateral ventricles, nearly in the center 

 of the brain, was from three eighths to half an inch in diameter in 

 an ox which was dissected in Edinburgh. This is about the same 

 amount as is found in the corpus striatum of the human brain. 

 There would be lively times if it were possible for a mental faculty 

 to occupy at once all the localities where gray matter is found ! 



ISTone of the suppositions about certain qualities of mind inhering 

 in particular portions of the brain have been proved, nor have they 

 stood the tests of science. 



The theories which have assumed that the cultivation of the intel- 

 lect gives shape and size to the brain within and consequently to 

 the skull without, advocates of which have not been wanting, have 

 been disproved by the collected facts. " There is no proof," says Dr. 

 J. 0. IsTott, in his Types of Mankind, " of the theory that the cultiva- 

 tion of the mind or of one set of faculties can give expansion or in- 

 creased size of brain. The Teutonic races, in their barbarous state, 

 two thousand years ago, possessed brains as large as now, and so with 

 other races." 



The St. Louis Globe Democrat of November 13, 1885, gives an 

 account of some excavations on the Mount Ararat farm, east of Car- 

 rollton, Illinois, where the bones of thirty-two Indians or mound 

 builders were unearthed. " They were not a diminutinve race, as 

 some people have supposed, some of the thigh bones being sixteen 

 inches long, and some of the skulls twenty-four inches in circumfer- 



* Idiocy and Imbecility, London, 18*77, pp. 216-219. 



f See The Brain as an Organ of Mind, London, 1880, p. 465 ; also, The Human Brain, 

 London, 1847, pp. 288, 289. 



