"6 Transactions. 



extend its uses. I look forward to the time wlien it will have a 

 well stored libraiy, a well HUed museum, and above all a well 

 qualified curator. (Cheers.) The Society is really an educational 

 institution, carrying on to some extent the work of university 

 extension in this town. It supplies an intellectual stimulus. I 

 think it must supply a bond of union among its members, and 

 tend to bi'eak down those narrow, artificial, but still rigid barriers 

 which are apt to spring up in provincial towns. I am told it 

 supplies glimpses of rural pleasure in its summer excursions ; and 

 it is seeking to supply social enjoyment in such a meeting as this. 

 (Cheers.) 



Sir James proceeded to deliver a very able lecture on 

 "Emotional Expression." Noticing Darwin's theory on the 

 subject, he remarked that although the facts observed by Darwin 

 himself or selected by him with great discrimination were always 

 of the greatest value, he thought the laws propounded by him 

 were now open to review. With regard to the principle of 

 antithesis, according to which certain movements were expressive 

 of certain emotions because they were the opposite of movements 

 expressive of opposite emotions, he had had doubt even when 

 working with Darwin. Among other reasons for scepticism he 

 observed that such sharply opposite emotions as grief and joy 

 were expressed by weeping and laughter ; but that these modes 

 of expression were not opposed might be seen by a simple experi- 

 ment. In Darwin's book you had an illu.stration of a baby 

 crying, but by placing another picture over it and retaining the 

 face the squalling baby was convei'ted into a fat and bald old 

 gentleman laughing consumedly. (Laughter.) This was explained 

 by the association in the mind of squalling with babies and 

 laughter with fat old gentlemen. The lecturer went on to refer 

 to the great discovery of the localisation of functional activity in 

 the brain, and the perfection of knowledge on the subject obtained 

 by experiment chiefly on the brains of monkeys, by the electrical 

 excitement of certain areas. He mentioned in this connection 

 that in one of those beneficent operations, which a few years ago 

 would have been considered impossible, he had seen Mr Victor 

 Horsley touch particular parts of a human brain, causing move- 

 ment in certain parts of the body, and remove a tumour from the J 

 brain, and thus cure the patient of epileptic fits. The central " 

 portion of the brain, where were localised the movements of the 

 face, controlled the nervous system, to which Darwin gave a 



