SIZE OF BRAIN : FACIAL ANGLE. 



549 



Fig. 291. SKULL OF EUROPEAN. 



almost all those persons who have been eminent for the 

 amount of their acquirements, or for the influence they have 

 obtained by their talents for command over their fellow-men, 

 have had large brains : this was the case, for example, with 

 Newton, Cuvier, and Napoleon. 



719. The size of the brain, and especially of its anterior 

 lobes (which seem particularly connected with the higher 

 reasoning powers), as compared with that of the face, may be 

 estimated pretty correctly by the measurement of the facial 

 angle; as proposed by Camper, an eminent Dutch naturalist. 

 This is done by drawing a horizontal line (cd, figs. 291 and 

 292), between the entrance to the 



ear and the floor of the nose, so as 

 to pass in the direction of the base 

 of the skull ; this is met by another 

 line (a, b) which passes from the 

 most prominent part of the forehead 

 to the front of the upper jaw. It is 

 evident that this last will be more 

 inclined to the former, so as to make 

 a more acute angle with it, in pro- 

 portion as the face is more developed and the forehead more 

 retreating ; whilst it will approach more nearly to a right angle, 

 if the forehead be prominent, and the muzzle project but little. 

 Hence this facial angle will indicate, with tolerable correct- 

 ness, the proportion which the brain bears to the face, the 

 instrument of intelligence, to the receptacle of the organs 

 of sense. 



720. Of all animals, there are none in which the facial 

 angle is so open as in Man ; and great variations- exist 

 in this respect, even among the . a 



different human races. Thus, in 

 European heads, the angle is usually 

 about 80 (fig. 291). The ancient 

 Greeks, in those statues of Deities 

 and Heroes to which they wished 

 to give the appearance of the greatest 

 intellectual power, made it 90, or 

 even more, by the projection they 

 gave to the forehead. On the other 

 hand, in the Negro races, it is commonly about 70 (fig. 292) ; 



Fig. 292. SKULL OF NEGRO. 



