UPON THE SERIES OP PREHISTORIC CRANIA. 273 



in which they lie ; fourthly, for their angular nucleolated nucleus 

 prolonged at its angles into processes somewhat like those of the 

 cell itself; fifthly, for these processes themselves, apical, basal, and 

 lateral. Those who are impressed with the value of the hypothesis 

 put forward by the late Professor Parkes 1 to the effect that in a 

 living body activity of function entails certain processes of growth, 

 whilst in rest the temporarily enlarged organ returns slowly to its 

 normal size, will be inclined to consider the clear lacunar space 

 which surrounds these large cells as eminently significant of their 

 activity as allowing room for increase of their dimensions. Nor 

 will any dispute as to whether these lacunar spaces are arte facta 

 due to action of hardening and contracting reagents or natural, 

 whether lymphatic or non-lymphatic, spaces affect this view. For 

 the contraction which, on the former of these views, the cell 

 undergoes in histological preparation may be very well taken as 

 reproducing after death a similar contraction which, ex hypothesis 

 would accompany rest and abeyance of function in life. 



Coming in the third place to a consideration of the evidence 

 which processes of disease or other injury may give us for the con- 

 clusion that the parts of the brain anterior to the plane of the 

 parietal tubera are more active and important in function than 

 those situated posteriorly to it, I would refer the reader to the 

 instructive Plates iii-viii given by Dr. J. Crichton Browne in 

 his most valuable paper, already referred to, in the { West Riding 

 Asylum Reports,' vol. vi. 1876, on the pathology of the general 

 paralysis of the insane. In those plates a number of brains from 

 such patients are figured, and so coloured as to indicate the regions 

 of the brain upon which the stress of the disease has fallen. There 

 is in these plates scarcely an instance in which a single patch of 

 colour is given on a spot situated posteriorly to the fissure of 

 Rolando. And I submit that as it is but reasonable to suppose that 

 the parts of any organ which are found to be the most liable to 



1 'Proceedings of the Koyal Society,' June 20, 1867, xvi. 94. Dr. Parkes having 

 discovered that though active exercise produced no immediate increase in the elimina- 

 tion of nitrogen, such increase did nevertheless take place when a certain interval had 

 elapsed after such exercise, explained (p. 55, 1. c.) this succession of phenomena by 

 suggesting that ' during action a muscle takes nitrogen and during rest gives it off,' or 

 that, • in other words, the action of a muscle would seem from these experiments not 

 to be connected with disintegration but with formation ; when it is in exercise the 

 muscle increases, when it is quiescent it lessens in bulk.' 



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