146 NOTES ON THE POST-MORTEM EXAMINATION OP A MAN 



showing that great additions had been made to the thickness of the 

 cranium from within. The bone, when held up against the light, 

 did not show any thinning, except along the course of these canals, 

 where it was translucent. The relation of diploe and external and 

 internal tables was much as in an ordinary skull. The anterior 

 part of the falx cerebri was rigid, but not ossified ; no exostoses 

 were observed in the interior of the skull. I did not observe any 

 sutures on the interior of the cranium, but I have no positive note 

 of this absence, as I have of that of the exostoses not rarely found 

 there in persons of advanced years. The foramen magnum was 

 small, its antero-posterior diameter, when clothed with its mem- 

 branes, admitted but the middle finger easily. The brain was 

 tolerably firm ; its weight, with the arachnoid and pia mater adhe- 

 rent, was two pounds eleven ounces avoirdupois (43 oz.). The 

 circumference of the skull, taken from the occipital protuberance 

 round the supra-orbital ridges, was twenty and a-half inches ; 

 its vertical arc, measured from one external auditory meatus to 

 the other, was twelve inches and a-half; these measurements 

 were taken over the thin integuments of the cranium. 



Some milkiness of colour was observable upon the arachnoid 

 where it crosses from one lateral lobe of the cerebellum to another, 

 and upon the temporo-sphenoidal lobe of the cerebrum. A small 

 clot of blood was observed in the basilar artery, the coats of which 

 vessel were free from disease. 



The fissure of Rolando, and the fissure anterior to it, were con- 

 siderably wider and deeper than is usual ; atrophy of the convolu- 

 tions was observable, but to a less extent, in the frontal lobe ; in 

 the occipital, and upon the internal aspect of the hemispheres, no 

 alteration had taken place. M. Durand-Fardel (p. xii. Op. cit.) 

 gives this as the usual order in which atrophy of the convolutions 

 and widening of the fissures takes place; and I have noticed a 

 similar succession in the brain of a man beyond 70. 



The application of M. Gratiolet's analysis of the convolutions to 

 this brain enables us to speak of it as of no high morphological 

 character. Though asymmetrical to a certain extent, it was yet 

 less so than is usual in human brains, and in no part does it mani- 

 fest any great complexity, as the hemispheres of men of marked 

 intelligence ordinarily do. Mr. Tyerman's pamphlet, already al- 

 luded to, will enable a reader to form a tolerably fair estimate of 



