BRAIN OF MAN AND THE BRAINS OF CERTAIN ANIMALS. 49 



weights speak of when placed in the scales opposite to the brain, or 

 relative, as compared with the body in which the brain was lodged 

 during life. It is obvious that an absolutely heavier brain may be 

 relatively lighter, and vice versa, than another. As less weight, as 

 it seems to me, is to be laid upon relative than upon absolute 

 weight, it may be well to state the facts relating to relative weight 

 first. By common consent the largest apes are always taken as 

 subjects of this comparison. Now, the heaviest encephalon of any 

 one of these creatures which has been put on record is the one 

 recorded in the 'Natural History Review' (July, 1861), by 

 Mr. Marshall, of a chimpanzee. The brain weighing 14 oz., the 

 body 264, the proportion of the one to the other was nearly 1:19. 

 Now, in a well-nourished girl of 8*8, whose dentition was further 

 advanced than is generally the dentition of the anthropomorphous 

 apes which die so early in our ungenial latitudes, I find their 

 proportion given by Tiedemann (' Philosophical Transactions,' 1836), 

 as 1 : 14- 13. The proportion between brain and body in a young 

 orang dissected by myself was 1 : 22*3. The very self-same pro- 

 portion, deducting the decimals, is given by Haller, ' Elem. Physi- 

 ologiae,' iv. 10, as having been found by him to be the proportion 

 existing between the brain and body of a boy of 6 years of age. 

 As, I believe, it has been recently shown that the average body- 

 weight of successful candidates in certain competitive examinations 

 is higher than those of the unsuccessful ; that is, as, indeed, the 

 popularity of the line might have led us to anticipate, that the little 

 body lodging a mighty mind is something of a rarity, and, as with 

 an increase of body-weight the favourable proportion of brain to 

 body is diminished, I need not go further into this question of 

 relative weights of body and brain. 



The question of absolute weight is of more meaning, and fortu- 

 nately can be despatched in fewer words. The maximum ape's 

 weight is 14 oz. ; the minimum human is, speaking roughly, 2 lb., 

 i.e. 32 oz. avoirdupois. 



The lowest authentic and reliable weight of a brain of a person 

 dying in possession of mental faculties which I can find in the 

 most recent work on the subject with which I am acquainted 

 (Wagner, ' Vorstudien,' Gottingen, i860) gives, from Dr. Sims, 

 31 oz. as the weight of a woman's brain who died at J 3, with a 

 brain at once atrophied and filled with fluid. Tiedemann's Negro 



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