190 EXPRESSION OF GRIEF: Chap. VII. 



ter, she stopped whimpering, and her eyebrows instantly 

 became oblique to an extraordinary degree. 



Here then, as I cannot doubt, we have the key to 

 the problem why the central fasciae of the frontal mus- 

 cle and the muscles round the eyes contract in oppo- 

 sition to each other under the influence of grief; — wheth- 

 er their contraction be prolonged, as with the melan- 

 cholic insane, or momentary, from some trifling cause 

 of distress. We have all of us, as infants, repeatedly 

 contracted our orbicular, corrugator, and pyramidal mus- 

 cles, in order to protect our eyes whilst screaming; our 

 progenitors before us have done the same during many 

 generations; and though with advancing years we easily 

 prevent, when feeling distressed, the utterance of 

 screams, we cannot from long habit always prevent a 

 slight contraction of the above-named muscles; nor in- 

 deed do we observe their contraction in ourselves, or 

 attempt to stop it, if slight. But the pyramidal mus- 

 cles seem to be less under the command of the will than 

 the other related muscles; and if they be well devel- 

 oped, their contraction can be checked only by the an- 

 tagonistic contraction of the central fascia? of the frontal 

 muscle. The result which necessarilv follows, if these 

 fasciae contract energetically, is the oblique drawing up 

 of the eyebrows, the puckering of their inner ends, and 

 the formation of rectangular furrows on the middle of the 

 forehead.-. As children and women cry much more freely 

 than men, and as grown-up persons of both sexes rarely 

 weep except from mental distress, we can understand 

 why the grief -muscles are more frequently seen in action, 

 as I believe to be the case, with children and women 

 than with men; and with adults of both sexes from men- 

 tal distress alone. In some of the cases before recorded, 

 as in that of the poor Dhangar woman and of the Hin- 

 dustani man, the action of the grief -muscles was quickly 



