2o8 Literary Notices. 



Sherrington's book is an equally important analysis of behavior from the side 

 of nerve physiology. Jennings has indicated the essential features in the behavior 

 of the lower organisms and the problems which are presented to the student of the 

 evolution of organic activity; Sherrington has shown a way to the scientific study 

 of the behavior of the vertebrates and has made an important contribution to our 

 knowledge of certain forms of activity in the higher animals. 



ROBERT M. YERKES. 



Bean, Robert Bennett. Some Racial Peculiarities of the Negro Brain. American Journal of 

 Anatomy, vol. 5, No. 4, pp. 353-43^, '*'ith 16 figures, 12 charts and 7 tables. September, 

 1906. 



To quote the author's own summary of his work, this is "an effort to show by 

 measurement of outline drawings of brains in different positions, by composites 

 of these outlines, and by actual drawings from individual brains that there is a 

 difference in the size and shape of Caucasian and negro brains, there being a 

 depression of the anterior association center and a relative bulging of the posterior 

 association center in the latter; that the genu of the corpus callosum is smaller in 

 the negro, both actually and in relation to the size of the splenium; and that the 

 cross section area of the corpus callosum is greater in relation to brain weight in 

 the Caucasian, while the brain weight of negro brains is actually less. The amount 

 of brain matter anterior and posterior to the fissure of Rolando is roughly estimated, 

 but other points of possible difference, as in the gyri, the insula, the opercula, the 

 Affenspalte, the proportions of white and gray matter, and the cerebro-cerebellar 

 ratio are necessarily omitted in this study." 



Only those who have attempted to institute exact comparisons between the 

 brains of representatives of different human races can fully realize how great a debt 

 of gratitude we owe to Dr. Bean (and to Professor Mall and Dr. Hrdlicka, who 

 suggested the investigation) for this simple and graphic method of exhibiting the 

 contrasts in form and in the proportions of various parts of the brain in negroes and 

 people of European extraction. Many writers have called attention to individual 

 points of racial difference in the brain and some investigators have attempted to 

 indicate these differences in figures; but hitherto no one has given us so comprehen- 

 sive a means of expressing in exact measurements the distinctive features of the 

 brain as a whole and the relative size of those parts which exhibit distinctively 

 racial and sexual variations in form and magnitude. 



The method adopted is very simple and perhaps even crude — as, in fact, every 

 attempt at expressing in figures the distinctive characters of such a complicated 

 organ as the brain in a large series of examples is bound to be — ^yet it admirably 

 serves the purpose for which it was invented, /. e., to present in a numerical form 

 the broad contrasts in the form and proportions of the brain in different races and 

 sexes. 



The memoir is based chiefly upon the results obtained by the measurement 

 of 152 brains, of which 103 were "American negroes" and the rest "American 

 Caucasians." All the measurements were made from an arbitrary axis proposed by 

 Dr. Mall — a line passing in the mesial plane "just above the anterior commissure 

 and just below the splenium." By measuring the distance to the surface of each 

 hemisphere along radii drawn from the center of this line at angles of 60° and 

 120°, respectively, to the anterior half of the axis in three planes — vertical sagittal, 



