234 STUDY OF BRAIXS OF SIX EMINENT SCIENTISTS AND SCHOLARS. 



pattern with their mental abihties in hfe, is but a sign of scientific progress and the 

 subject should form no unimportant branch of anthropometric research. We know 

 the mind of man to differ most from that of the brute in the unusual development 

 of the associations of recepts and concepts, i. e., the powers of reasoning. But if in 

 the brain of the average man there be a hundred, or two hundred, or five hundred 

 connections for every fact that he remembers, their number is many times greater in 

 that of the intellectually superior genius. An elaboration of brain-structure must 

 therefore accompany the higher intelligence and it is in this direction that our re- 

 searches must be pursued. 



I have endeavored to point out in the preceding lines some of the methods of 

 study that give most promise of success in our inquiry. Some of the problems which 

 have been receiving the most attention up to the present time are based upon the 

 microscopic study of the unit of the nervous system, the neurone or nerve-cell and its 

 axone with the numberless dendrites, and upon the intricate grouping and chaining 

 of these millions of neurons within the central nervous system. Not less important 

 are the studies of the morphologic appearances of the cortical surface, the compara- 

 tive extent of certain cortical areas, upon the weight of the brain and its component 

 parts as well as in comparison with that of the spinal cord ; of the ratio between the 

 collective cross-section area of the cranial nerves and of the spinal cord ; of the number 

 of fibers in different tracts, be they eflferent, afferent or associative (such as the 

 callosum) ; on the relative bulk of gray and white matter ; on the progressive 

 rayelinization of different nerve-fiber tracts, and so on almost without end. 



IV. 



Turning now to the objective studies which it is the chief purpose of this memoir 

 to present, I now proceed to the detailed description of the brain of the six eminent 

 American scientists and scholars who were members of the American Anthropometric 

 Society. 



Professor Cope stood forth as a great paleontologist. Professor Joseph Leidy was 

 a recognized leader of natural science who, while he developed many new facts and 

 deduced new laws, yet had that rare faculty of conveying to others — in simplified and 

 systematized form — those fundamental principles of biology so difficult for the ordi- 

 nary student to grasp. Dr. Philip Leidy was a celebrated physician and surgeon who 

 served with distinction through the Civil War and who later attained high position in 

 various spheres of human activity by dint of strong and inherent executive ability. 

 Dr. Pepper stood in the first rank among clinicians and men of affairs. Professor 

 Harrison Allen exhibited not a little aptitude in the direction of comparative anatomy 



