ZOOLOGY. 291 



poid monkey. The sheep and the goat have brains identical in struc- 

 ture, the one being a stupid, the other an intelligent, animal. 



Smallest Human Brain on Record. Dr. Gore has furnished the An- 

 thropological Society an account of the smallest, adult human brain on 

 record. 'The brain of the adult male averages forty-nine ounces; in 

 females, the average is forty-three and a half ounces. The female 

 whose brain was described was forty-two years of age, and without 

 any symptom of disease. She was five feet high, and her intellect 

 was infantile. The brain without 'the membranes weighed ten ounces 

 five grains, being the smallest mature brain on record. 



Brain of Man and Apes. - - At a recent meeting of the London 

 Anthropological Society, Prof. Owen, in commenting upon a paper 

 presented ' On the Brain of a Female Idiot," observed, that as the 

 brain of man is more complex in its organization than the brain of 

 inferior animals, it is more subject to injury, and more liable to ex- 

 perience the want of perfect development. Instances of idiocy occur 

 among all races of mankind. Extreme smallness of the skull indicated 

 in all cases want of intellect approaching to idiocy. Alluding to the 

 attempts that have been made to find a link of connection between 

 man and apes, he remarked that it was possible that an idiot with an 

 imperfectly developed brain might wander into some cave, and there 

 die, and in two or three hundred yeajs his bones might be cov- 

 ered with mud, or be imbedded in stalagmite, and when discovered, 

 such a skull might be adduced as affording the looked-for link con- 

 necting man with the inferior animals ; but the brain of such an idiot, 

 as the female whose skull was exhibited, is distinctly different from 

 that of the anthropoid apes ; and he expressed an opinion that the 

 difference is too wide to be bridged over by the skull of any creature 

 yet discovered. 



Wounds of the Brain. M. Flourens has presented to the Academy 

 of Sciences a note of a series of experiments performed by him for 

 the purpose of showing the curability of wounds of the brain, and, 

 what is more, the facility with which they are cured. He trepanned 

 the skulls of dogs and rabbits, made a small opening through the dura 

 mater and into the substance of the brain, and then put bullets into 

 the wound. These bullets gradually penetrated through the- cere- 

 bral matter by their own weight. When the ball was small, he found 

 that the whole thickness of the lobe of the brain or of the cerebellum 

 might be traversed by it without occasioning any symptom of acci- 

 dent or disturbance of functions. The fissure made by the passage 

 of the ball remains for some time as a canal ; it then closes up and 

 cicatrizes. In one case of a rabbit, a ball was placed on the posterior 

 part of the cerebellum, immediately above the vital point (Flourens's 

 nceud vital). When the ball had reached that part and had exercised 

 a certain degree of pressure* the animal died. 



On the Physical Characteristics of the Andaman Islanders. At a 

 recent meeting of the British Geographical Society, Prof. Owen made 

 some observations on the skeleton of a native of the Andaman Isl- 

 ands; the only one yet received in Europe, (See Ann. Sci Dis. 

 1862, p. 14). He stated that he had found it to be that of an adult 

 male in the prime of life, showing eridencc, in the texture of the 

 bones and the development of their parts, of having belonged to an 



