Dr Morton on the Size of the Brain. 331 
respect of their capacity, unless we compare male with male, 
female with female heads, or, at least, know how many of 
either sex go to make up the national complement. 
*« A ridiculous blunder of this kind is made by Mr Sims, in 
his paper and valuable correlative table of the weight of 253 
brains (Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, vol. xix.). He there 
attacks the result of my observation (published by Dr Monro, 
Anatomy of the Brain, &c., 1831)—that the human encephalos 
(brain proper and after-brain) reaches its full size by seven 
years of age, perhaps somewhat earlier. In refutation of this 
paradox, he slumps the male and female brains together ; 
and because he finds, that the average weight of his adults, 
among whom the males are greatly the more numerous, is 
larger than the average weight of his impuberals, among 
whom the females preponderate, he jumps at once to the 
conclusion, that I am wrong, and that the encephalos con- 
tinues to grow, to diminish, and to grow again (!), for—t for- 
get how long after the period of maturity. Fortunately, 
along with his crotchets, he has given the detail of his weigh- 
ings ; and his table, when properly arranged, confutes him- 
self, and superfluously confirms me. That is, comparing the 
girls with the women, and the boys with the men, it appears, 
from his own induction, that the cranial contents do reach 
the average amount even before the age of seven. 
“ Tiedemann (Das Hirn des Negers, &c., 1837, p. 4) notes 
the contradiction of Sims’s result and mine ; but he does not 
solve it. The same is done, and not done, by Dr Bostock, in 
his Physiology. Tiedemann, however, remarks, that his own 
observations coincide with mine (p. 10) ; as is, indeed, evident 
from his table (p. 11) “of the cranial capacity from birth 
to adolescence,” though, unfortunately, in that table, but in 
that alone, he has not discriminated the sex. 
«Dr Morton’s conclusion, as to the comparative size of the 
Negro brain, is contrary to Tiedemann’s larger, and to my 
smaller, induction ; which concur in proving, that the Negro 
encephalos is not less than the European, and greatly larger 
than the Hindoo, the Ceylonese, and sundry other Asiatic 
brains. But the vice, already noticed, of Dr Morton’s induc- 
