260 NUG^. ETHNOLOGICAE. 



form and dimensions, with tliat of the bones of the face. As tlie for- 

 mer contains the organ of the intellect, and the latter those of the senses 

 and of mastication, it is presumed that the greater size of the former will 

 hidicate the preponderance of mind over sense, and that an excess of 

 the latter will place the animal lower in the scale. There are several 

 methods of estimating this proportion. That which is most generally 

 adopted, is effected by what is called the facial angle of Camper^ from the 

 physiologist with whom it originated. A line, known as the facial line, 

 is drawn from the most prominent point of the forehead to the socket 

 of the front teeth of the upper jaw, and another horizontally backwards 

 in the direction of the plane of the head in its natural erect position. 

 Sometimes the latter is made parallel with the floor of the nostrils, 

 which amounts to the same thing, and as in man it generally passes 

 over the external opening of the ear, the skulls of animals should be 

 placed in the same position, in order to obtain a just comparison. The 

 human face being small and placed directly under the cranium, the angle 

 formed by these two lines is very large, sometimes a right angle and in 

 rare instances even an obtuse one, while in animals it becomes more and 

 more acute as we descend in the scale. There are apparently excep- 

 tions to this rule, as in the elephant and owl, but the great prominence 

 of the forehead in these animals depends upon the unusual size of the 

 frontal sinus, a cavity between the two plates of the frontal bone, which 

 exists in man to a slight extent, but is very large in them. Another 

 method of arriving at the same result, is by comparing the area of the 

 cranium with that of the face in a vertical section of the skull, leaving 

 out the lower jaw. It will then be found that in man the craninm is 

 four times the size of the face, while in the cow the face is double and 

 in the horse quadruple the size of the cranium. Yet as these propor- 

 tions are not invariable in their correspondence with the amount of in- 

 tellectual manifestation, another mode of comparison has been devised, 

 which regards the size of the separate portions of the brain. Thus, it 

 is found that in man the upper and anterior portions ai'e much larger 

 than in the brains of animals, whose whole mass is equal in weight. 

 According to the recent researches of Bourgery, the cerebral hemis- 

 pheres, in man, include a nervous mass which is nine times that of the 

 cerebellum and twenty-four times that of the spinal cord. There is no 

 animal in whom this proportion is approached. The surface of the 

 brain, in man particularly, is marked by deep furrows or convolutions, 

 which increase the amount of its surface amazingly. These are said to 

 be deep in animals and even in individuals, in proportion to their intel- 

 lect. Both these latter modes of estimating the relative amount of the 



