OUTLINES OF PERIODICAL. LITERATURE. 341 



and nervous system, whether in a state of health or disease, with disquisi- 

 tions on ethical questions even when discussed without reference to organiz- 

 ation. 3, Notices of Books, comprising an account, analytical or critical, of 

 such works as tend to promote the study of mind and its manifestations- 

 4, Short Communications designed to form an assemblage of such hints, sug- 

 gestions, observations, criticisms, and prospective and retrospective notes as 

 occur to the minds of correspondents. 5, Notes on Opinions, Intelligence, and 

 Biographical Sketches intended to convey information with respect to the 

 proceedings of societies, to lectures and discussions, and to the memorials of 

 distinguished psychologists. As an inducement to those who may feel dis- 

 posed to ascertain, from personal examination, how well these pretensions 

 have been realized, we proceed to select the outlines of the current eleventh 

 volume : our own conviction is, that the Editors have amply and honourably 

 redeemed their pledge ; and, with this satisfactory impression, we enter on a 

 survey of their 



No. LIV An address by the original proprietors and conductors of the 



Journal, and a prefatory explanation respecting the plans and prospects of 

 the new Editor, introduce the volume. Dr. Combe evinces, with equal 

 suavity and force of demonstration, the fallacy of Professor Tiedemann's 

 comparison of the Negro brain and intellect with those of the European : 

 the doctor establishes this position also, as the strangest thing of all — that 

 Tiedemann's conclusions or arithmetical results are directly at variance with 

 the evidence of his own facts and figures, and strongly confirmatory of the 

 opinion which it his sole purpose to refute. Mr. Combe's letters on the in- 

 stitutions of Germany, afford much valuable statistical information regarding 

 the state of mental philosophy, in some of the continental cities. There are 

 great good sense and much harmony in the Remarks on the function of the 

 faculty and its organ, through whose instrumentality the mind perceives 

 melody : the writer's object is, to assist observers in their labour, by giving a 

 more precise description of Sound as it occurs in music. An improvement 

 of organ ological busts is suggested by Mr. Hytch ; his reasoning is replete 

 with sentiment, and he may be thought persuasive. C. B. states the case of 

 ins own head, in which the organs of Concentrativeness are small, while those 

 of Inhabitiveness are supposed to be large: this case displays ingeniousness 

 and sincerity for its characters. The facts of a peculiar revival of memory, 

 of a spectral illusion, and of a monomania apparently induced by great and 

 unusual excitement of the faculty of Tune through its organ, merit unpre- 

 judiced attention. The short communications, notes on opinions and intelli- 

 gence will furnish topics of profitable mental exercise and self-discipline in 

 counteracting the poison of prejudice, to well-regulated minds. 



I,V Suggestions on the requisites for the advancement of mental science 



are very judicious: they conclude with the remark, applicable to all the sci- 

 ences — that, simplicity and precision, not fine writing, should be esteemed a 

 first excellence in the literature of science, and especially so in the record of 

 its facts. An experiment proposed for preventing the atrocities committed 

 in New South Wales by transported convicts, deserves the serious considers, 

 tion of those who lake an interest in the diffusion of human happiness. Mr- 

 Combe remarks on the organological busts, and regrets that, by the manner 

 in which .Mr. Ilytch treated this subject, he should furnish the opponents ol 

 phrenologj with a plausible pretence i<>v affirming thai the very elements of 



