74 MEMOIR ( CAMPER. 



would never have fulfilled this double ohject. That 

 the brain might be packed aright, and to relieve the 

 head of useless weight, we at the same time see that 

 the tables of the cranium are parted asunder by a 

 great number of bony cells, to the distance of many 

 inches. These communicate with the throat, and 

 are filled with air instead of marrow, and are thus 

 analogous to the heads of birds. 



His remarks on the brain itself, in which he con- 

 tends, in opposition to certain great zoologists, that 

 its size is in keeping with the bulk of the animal, 

 and points out the relative position of the cerebrum 

 and cerebellum ; on the eye, describing the third 

 eyelid, with its peculiar muscles ; on the proboscis, 

 describing its minute structure, its muscles, its uses, 

 in the young, &c. ; on Galen's statement, that there 

 is a bone in the elephant's heart, one of which he 

 himself possessed ; also on the much disputed point 

 whether it has a gall-bladder or not ; his remarks, we 

 say, on these, and many other analogous points, are 

 at once most minute and satisfactory. 



Such was the nature of Camper's occupations till 

 the beginning of 1776, when he sustained a heavy 

 stroke of affliction in the death of his wife, in whom 

 his affections had been centred during a union of 

 nearly twenty years; and whose domestic virtues 

 and exemplary attention to her children, had secured 

 her the esteem and respect of all who knew her. 



As the most efficacious mode of soothing his grief, 

 be determined to vary the scene, by making an PX- 



