THE OLD PHRENOLOGY AND THE NEW. 481 



Chalmers 53 ounces. As instances of high brain-weights, without cor- 

 responding intellectual endowment, may be mentioned four brains 

 weighed by.Peacock, the weights of which varied from 67'5 to 61 ounces. 

 Several insane persons have had brains of 64| ounces, 63 ounces, 61 

 ounces, and 60 ounces, as related by Bucknill, Thurnam, and others. 

 With respect to the brain-weights of the fair sex, anatomical authority 

 asserts that in women with brains weighing 55'25 ounces and 50 ounces, 

 no marked intellectual features were noted. Below 30 ounces, the 

 human brain becomes idiotic in character, so that there appears to ex- 

 ist a minimum weight, below which rational mental action is unknown. 

 The anatomist's conclusions regarding brain capacity and mental en- 

 dowments are therefore plain. He maintains that the size and weight 

 of the organ do not of themselves afford any reliable grounds for an 

 estimate of the mental endowments, while his researches also prove that 

 a large brain and high intellectual powers are not necessarily or in- 

 variably associated together. 



The foregoing details will be found to assist us in our criticism of 

 the pretensions of the old phrenology as a basis for estimating " the 

 mind's construction " and the mental habits of man. Primarily, let us 

 inquire if development — that great criterion of the nature of living 

 structure — lends any countenance to the idea that the brain is a collec- 

 tion of organs such as the phrenologist asserts it to be. The brain of 

 man, like that of all other backboned animals, appears to begin its his- 

 tory in a certain delicate streak or furrow which is developed on the 

 surface of the matter of the germ. Within this furrow the brain and 

 spinal cord are at first represented by an elongated strip of nervous 

 matter, which strip, as the furrow closes to form a tube, also becomes 

 tubular, and incloses within it, as the hollow of the tube, the little 

 canal which persists in the center of the spinal cord. The front part 

 of this nervous tube, which soon exhibits a division into gray and white 

 matter, now begins to expand so as to form three swellings named 

 vesicles. From these vesicles the brain and its parts are formed. The 

 foremost swelling soon produces the parts known as the optic lobes, 

 and also the structures which are destined to form the hemispheres or 

 halves of the brain itself. The middle swelling contributes to the 

 formation of certain important structures of the brain ; and finally the 

 cerebellum or lesser brain, along with the upper part of the spinal cord 

 and other structures, appear as the result of the full development of the 

 hinder or tliird swelling. Nor must we neglect to note that at first the 

 human brain is completely smooth and destitute of convolutions, and 

 only acquires its convoluted appearance toward the completion of de- 

 velopment. 



It is now an appropriate duty to inquire if the liistory of the brain's 

 growth affords any countenance or support to the phrenological divi- 

 sion of the organ into some thirty -five different organs and seats of fac- 

 ulties. The query is further a perfectly legitimate one. The phrenolo- 



