Riverside Skull. 153 



Certain craniologists have employed Troy weight to determine 

 the ounces a brain may weigh, hence some confusion has arisen as 

 to cerebral ponderosity. The brain of Cuvier weighed 186 1 

 ^n?/'///«^^=:2 8945 grains — or 66 ounces; that of Byron weiglied 1807 

 giainmes^=. 28009 grains, or 64 ounces. 'I'he brain of Agassiz 

 weighed 64^ ounces, and that of Humboldt 65^ ounces. These 

 figures are only approximately exact. 



The other day I selected two skulls from our Madisonville collec- 

 tion, the larger would hold 57 ounces of brain, and the smaller 

 42 ounces. The smallest approaches the diminutive in capacity ; 

 while the largest attains the dimensions of the very biggest skulls. 

 A man has a large brain which weighs 56 ounces. The smallest 

 iDrain in the Leipsic collection — that of a native Australian — weighed 

 .35 ounces. The gorilla and the chimpanzee have brain-pans which 

 hold from 28 to 36 cubic inches, which weigh from 20 to 25 ounces 

 of brain. There is a pronounced difference between the cranial 

 ■capacities of the larger apes ; and there is considerable difference 

 between the largest anthropoid brain and that of savage man. 

 Approach in size means very little. A whale has as large a brain 

 as is possessed by a statesman. An elephant has more brain than 

 any other animal. 



In regard to the age of fossils, I beg to say that great scope is 

 given to speculation. A petrefaction is a fixture — it belongs to 

 some geological era or epoch, with relationship to other periods in 

 palgeontological history; but a fossil picked out of the drift in a 

 pile of river gravel is an object upon which there may be ventured 

 the wildest theory as to its perambulations. If we could determine 

 the period at which the Ohio ranged fifty feet higher than it now 

 ■does, we might conjecture the age of the Riverside skull. From 

 what scientists write in regard to the time when the first organism 

 appeared upon our planet, carrying the event back millions of 

 years, the discrepancy of a thousand years might be made in the 

 reckoning, and the result be not far out of the way. In the 

 infinity of time the span of a century is an insignificant leap — is as 

 a day or an hour. The skeletons of the Madisonville cemetery 

 "were overgrown with forest trees whose annular rings count 700 or 

 more. Probably the burials reach back 800 or 1,000 years. An 

 older history can not be claimed for them. I conjecture that the 

 Riverside skull is as ancient as any of the crania in our cabinet, unless 

 there be an embalmed Egyptian skull in the collection. Skeletons 



