888 THE EXTERNAL CONFIGURATION 



and transitions are, in fact, frequently encountered, so 

 that the remarks made in reference to this part of our sub- 

 ject must be suggestive and general rather than precise 

 and particular. 



Looked at from above, the shape or outline of the 

 European brain varies considerably. The narrowed and, 

 as it were, compressed anterior lobes in the Bushwoman, as 

 well as the narrow tapering shape of the occipital lobes, 

 are eminently foetal characteristics. As a rule, this 

 contracted condition of the anterior lobes is absent in 

 the European brain, and in some specimens the shape is 

 so broadly oval as even to approach the circular outline, as 

 in that of the Scotchman represented by Turner (fig. 138). 



The brain of a "celebrated naturalist" figured by Kudolph 

 Wagner* Iras much the same almost circular outline when seen 

 from above, and both in it and in the brain of the Scotchman 

 already referred to, the posterior extremity constitutes the broad 

 end of the oval. On the other hand the brain of the great mathe- 

 matician and astronomer Gauss (fig. 141) has, when seen from 

 above, a distinctly elliptical outline— the curve of the anterior being 

 almost exactly equal to that of the posterior lobes, and the greatest 

 transverse diameter being equidistant from both extremities. A 

 similar upper outhne is to be seen in the much less elaborately 

 convoluted brain of the artizan Krebs,l although the side view of 

 this same brain, when compared with that of Gauss (loc. cit., tab. 

 vi.), shows it to be very deficient in depth, both in the frontal and in 

 the parietal regions. The upper outline of the brain of the philo- 

 logist Hermann, likewise depicted by Wagner, is also nearly ellip- 

 tical, the posterior being very slightly narrower than the anterior 

 extremity. Its widest transverse diameter, moreover, is situated 

 midway between its two extremities, though this region corresponds 

 with the supra-marginal lobule rather than with the lower end of 

 the ascending parietal convolution, as in the brain of Gauss and in 

 that of the artizan Krebs. A reference to fig. 135 will show that 

 the brain of the Bushwoman is also widest in the situation of 

 the very prominent ' supra-marginal lobules,' though these are 



* " Vorstudien," tab. ij. \ Wagner, loc. cit. tab. ij. fig. 4, 



