454 



NA TV RE 



[March 7, 1901 



Wkh the exception of an interesting paper on the graphite and 

 rocks of Ceylon, contributed last June to the Geological Society 

 of London by Mr. Coomara-Swamy, but published too late to 

 be alluded to by Dr. Grunling, little has been done. Mr. 

 Coomara-Swamy himself remarks, " No geological survey is in 

 progress in Ceylon ; it is much to be hoped that the Govern- 

 ment will soon realise the importance of instituting one." 



To give a very brief survey of the scientific results : — 



Dr. Griinling makes it clear that the graphite always occurs 

 in typical symmetrical veins, though these have been much 

 crushed and altered by earth movements which have spent their 

 energy upon the soft graphite, and have consequently spared the 

 country rock (granulite). Dr. Weinschenk comes to the con- 

 clusion that the graphite is of volcanic, and certainly not of 

 organic origin, and is probably due to the action of vapours con- 

 taining carbon ; he suggests that carbon dioxide and cyanogen 

 compounds have played the chief part in its production. 

 Among the associated minerals it is remarkable that, as at 

 Passauj nontronite is one of the invariable decomposition pro- 

 ducts accompanying the graphite. 



., Dr. Grunling is of opinion that the gemstones of the sands 

 and gravels were derived from the dolomitic limestone which 

 abounds in some parts of the island, for the spinel, which is 

 certainly found in the limestone, contains sapphire, phlogopite, 

 &c. , while the corundum contains phlogopite, rutile and spinel. 

 A granular marble from Wattegama, on the Kandy railroad, 

 proves to be a theoretically pure dolomite ; it contains, among 

 other minerals, a remarkable blue apatite, which has been 

 analysed by Dr. Schiffer and is found to be a fluor-apatite con- 

 taining 15 per cent, of chlor-apatite. It is curious that Dr. 

 Griinling was unable to obtain any information concerning the 

 original locality of the tourmalines ; they are probably all 

 derived from the cabook or laterite, and from some one place, 



Worobieff's crystallographic measurements relate to i lo crystals 

 remarkably rich in faces, and have resulted in the establishment 

 of no less than 131 new forms; one crystal alone presented the 

 faces of fifty-nine forms ; the table of calculated angles fills forty- 

 three pages. He finds that the symmetry of tourmaline is un- 

 doubtedly ditrigonal, and not tetartohedral as has been supposed 

 by some authors. The paper also contains numerous observa- 

 tions upon the pyro-electric properties of tourmaline, and dis- 

 tinguishes between the faces of the analogous and of the anti- 

 logous poles. 



Dr. Melczer's paper establishes beyond doubt that the chryso- 

 beryls of Ceylon, of Brazil and of the Urals (Alexandrite) pos- 

 sess the same axes, and that the twinning takes place parallel to 

 (031), not to (on). His optical study of the spinel leads him 

 to the conclusion that the refractive index of this mineral varies 

 with the colour ; it is least in the most highly coloured parts. 



The whole series of investigations reflects much credit upon 

 the administration of the Tamnau fund, upon those who have 

 collected and studied the minerals, and upon Prof. Groth, in 

 whose laboratory the investigations have been successfully 

 carried cut. 



The next award of this useful fund will be expected with 

 nterest. H. A. Miers. 





CRANIOLOGY.^ 



w 



^E have assembled here to-day in order that we may com- 

 memorate the merits of John Hunter and such other 

 persons whose labfiurs have . contributed to the extension of 

 our knowledge in comparative anatomy, physiology, or 

 surgery. Hunter's life in all its various aspects has been 

 so frequently dwelt on in former orations delivered in this 

 theatre that it is beyond my power to throw any fresh light 

 on this subject. His fan;ie is attributable to his having 

 possessed an intense love pi science, indomitable energy, 

 and a self-reUan}:, manly character. If we turn to his 

 portrait hanging on the w^ll^ of this theatre, it would seem 

 th^ at the time when this likeness was painted Hunter was 

 engaged in the study of the cra,niology of man and anthropoid 

 ^pes, for qn the table before him there is an open volume, and 

 on its pages we see clearly drawn a human skull and the skull 

 of a chimpanzee. Hunter is portrayed, pen in hand, in deep 

 t^9HgJit, having just turned away from the book he had been 



^1 ".The Hunterian Oration.'"";Delivered in the theatre of the Royal 

 Coljlpge of Surgeons of England oij February 14, by Mr. N. C. Macnamarji. 

 Abridged horn the Lancet.^ 



NO. 1636, VOL. 63] 



studying, and though his notes on comparative anatomy w^e 

 unfortunately destroyed with his other manuscripts, we can 

 hardly doubt that craniology was a subject in which he was 

 deeply interested, or it would not have held so prominent a 

 position in this famous picture. It would, therefore, seem that 

 on an occasion such as the present we can do no higher honour 

 to Hunter's memory and to that of ;some of the able men 

 of science who have followed him than by endeavouring to give 

 in as few words as possible a rc'sumt^ of their labours, with 

 especial reference to the subject of craniology and the light it is 

 capable of throwing on the prehistoric inhabitants of western 

 Europe and of the evolution of the race of men to which we 

 belong. One of the most brilliant and original thinkers who 

 has occupied the presidential chair of this college, Sir William 

 Lawrence, in his ever-memorable lectures on the.natural history 

 of man, delivered in this college in the year 1819, from his re- 

 searches in comparative anatomy, foreshadowed the idea that 

 man and apes were derived frorfi common ancestors. Lawrence's 

 opinions were received with a storm of adverse criticism. Mr. 

 Abernethy, for instance, charged him with " propagating 

 opinions detrimental to society and endeavouring to enforce 

 them for the purpose of loosening those restraints on which the 

 welfare of mankind depend." Time, however, ha3 proved that 

 Lawrence was right, and in the course of lectures delivered in this 

 theatre in February 1899, Pfof. Keith, from a careful analysis of 

 the maximum number of anatomical characters common to man 

 and apes, arrived at the conclusion that they are derived from an 

 identical or a kindred stock. While admitting without reserve that 

 man and apes are structurally almost identical, nevertheless, as 

 pointed out by Prof. Huxley in the year 1863, they differ very 

 materially as regards the relative weight of their brains. The 

 carcass of a full-grown gorilla is heavier than that of an average- 

 sized European, but it is doubtful whether a healthy adult 

 European's brain ever weighed less than 32 ounces, or the brain 

 of the heaviest gorilla ever exceeded 20 ounces in weight. 

 Although at the present time there is this marked relative differ- 

 ence between the weight of the brain and the form of the 

 skulls of Europeans and apes, this was not always the case, for 

 the calvaria of the earliest discovered human beings were in 

 form not very far removed from those of contemporary anthro- 

 poid apes. This fact leads us to inquire into the nature of the 

 conditions which have led to the increased capacity of the 

 human cranium and to the vast superiority of man's intellectual 

 endowments over those of all the other primates. If we turn 

 to Hunter's preparations in our museum we find among them 

 some remarkable specimens which he describes as "com- 

 pressed," " unsymmetrical " human crania, which he believed 

 were the result of premature consolidation of one or more of 

 the sutures of the skull. Since Hunter's day various authori- 

 ties have devoted much time to the subject of the abnormal 

 closure of the cranial sutures in man ; prominent among them 

 are the names of the chief of England's craniologists, Dr. 

 Thurnam and Dr. Barnard Davis — the splendid collection of 

 prehistoric and other skulls made by the latter gentleman are 

 now in the possession of our college. From evidence of this 

 nature we have come to learn that the size and form of the 

 skull depends to a large extent on the growth of the bones 

 of which it is formed along the lines of the various cranial 

 sutures. 



It is well known that the frontal bone, which forms the vault 

 of the anterior part of the cranium in the young of man and 

 apes, is divided by a suture, and so long as this line of growth, 

 together with the coronal and other sutures by which the frontal 

 is separated from surrounding bones, remains open, the fore part 

 of the skull, and with it the anterior fossse which it encloses, can 

 expand. But if the frontal and the other anterior sutures of the 

 cranium consolidate early in life the fore part of the skull cannot 

 increase in capacity beyond the size it had reached in infancy. 

 Prof. Deneker, in his work on the embryology and development 

 of anthropoid apes, has shown that in consequence of the early 

 closure of the anterior sutures of the skull of these animals the 

 fore part of their brain does not increase beyond the size it had 

 attained at the end of the first year of life, but in man these 

 sutures do not consolidate until a much later period, so that the 

 anterior lobes of his brain are enabled to, and actually do, 

 become far more perfectly developed than the corresponding 

 lobes among apes ; men of the same bulk have four times as 

 much superficial brain surface as anthropoid apes. 



Whatever other functions the anterior lobes of the brain 

 perform, their cortical nerve elements, in conjunction with 



fid ...'JV A^Oi .0/ 



