UPON THE SERIES OF PREHISTORIC CRANIA. 267 



the centre of the parietal eminence and parallel to the line of the 

 lambdoid suture, and behind by that line itself, may, with the zone 



to take this view at the present time. In the last edition indeed (1870, iii. 2, p. 454) 

 of Cruveilhier's ' Anatomie Descriptive' I find the words ' C'est sur ces circonvolutiona 

 occipi tales que porte principalement l'atrophie senile/ standing without note or com- 

 ment or inference in connexion with them, and the reference to Neumann is omitted. 

 But what is of much greater consequence is to find an authority with the vast 

 experience which Dr. J. Crichton Browne possesses (see 'West Riding Lunatic Asylum 

 Reports/ 1876, vol. vi. p. 218) averring that the exemption which the occipital lobes 

 on his showing enjoy from the lesions characteristic of the general paralysis of the 

 insane, is • as it were only part of a wider immunity from visible pathological change ' 

 which they enjoy 'in all varieties of chronic insanity,' inclusive (p. 178) of 'senile, 

 simple, and consecutive dementia.' Dr. Fox in like manner in his • Pathological 

 Anatomy of the Nervous Centres/ 1874, p. 41, tells us that 'the posterior lobes are 

 less often affected than the middle, and hemorrhage there seems to be of far less 

 serious import.' To these statements it may be well to add the following made by 

 Professor Schroder van der Kolk (' Pathology and Therapeutics of Mental Diseases/ 

 English translation by J. T. Rudall, Melbourne, 1869, p. 46), 'In insanity proper, in 

 cases of confusion of ideas, and of haughty insanity, I have always found the anterior 

 lobes of the brain suffering, but on the contrary in the melancholic and those who 

 condemned themselves with or without religious admixture, I have found the upper 

 and posterior parts of the lobes diseased, and that in the latter cases the understanding 

 often showed no traces of disturbance, inasmuch as the individuals judged correctly 

 and disputed acutely. The pathological affection limits itself then to the upper 

 and hinder parts of the lobes, and in the fore parts nothing abnormal is seen in regard 

 to colour, firmness, and connexion with the pia mater. In those who at last finished 

 with dementia I never fouud the anterior parts of the lobes intact.' Cf. also pp. 24, 

 41, 44, 59, 63,93,1.0. 



Dr. Lelut, the author of a memoir ' Du developpement du cr&ne dans ses rapports 

 avec celui de l'intelligence/ published in the ' Gazette Me'dicale de Paris,' has been 

 referred to by M. Foville ('Systeme Nerveux,' 1844, p. 649) and by Virchow ('Gesamm. 

 Abhandlungen,' p. 916) as having shown that in the cases of idiots the greatest diminu- 

 tion of the skull takes place in the posterior part of its circumference. Neither of the 

 authors who refer to M. Lelut accept this conclusion ; and a reference to Professor 

 Marshall's paper in the 'Philosophical Transactions' for 1864 (ft. 543, pi. xxi, xxii, 

 xxiii), ' On the Brain of a Bushwoman and on the Brains of two Idiots of European 

 Descent,' will show that the facts upon which it is based may very readily be over- 

 stated, the real state of the case as regards the brains of these idiots being that ' whilst 

 all parts have been more or less arrested, the frontal and occipital lobes have suffered 

 more than the temporal of parietal/ 



The comparative anatomy of the brains of men and apes shows that the occipital 

 lobes have a greater relative development in the lower than in the higher apes, 

 and it has been maintained by Dr. A. Pansch ('De Sulcis et Gyris in Celebris 

 simiarum et hominum,' 1866, p. 25 ; ' Archiv fur Anthropologic,' 1869, iii. p. 252) that 

 the 'operculum' which bounds the parietooccipital fissure posteriorly is to be considered 

 an upgrowth which is sometimes much diminished in the Anthropomorpha, and which 

 is only rarely to be seen, except rudimentarily represented, in man. In other words, 

 the external perpendicular or occi pi to-parietal fissure is a valley formed not by depres- 

 sion or excavation but by upheaval of cerebral substance, and this upheaval is less 

 marked in the higher than in the lower Simiadae, and in Hominidae is usually entirely 



