406 MENTAL FUNCTIONS OF 



they must depend; and, if these are discovered, the case does 

 but remain the same as before. Yet, whatever may be our innate 



Dr. Vimont of Caen has carried on the researches into the phrenology of 

 brutes with extraordinary perseverance, and produced a most magnificent work. 

 Attracted, in 1818, by the prize offered by the French Institute to the author 

 of the best memoir upon the anatomy of the brain in the four classes of verte- 

 brated animals, he began researches into the subject, without any reference to 

 phrenology, for he had not read Gall, and had seen him spoken of in books 

 and heard of him only as a charlatan : however, he thought it incumbent upon 

 him to read Gall's work among others. " Hardly," says he, " had I begun to 

 read it, when I found that I had to do with one of those extraordinary men 

 whom dark envy endeavours to exclude from the rank to which their genius calls 

 them, and against whom it employs the arms of the coward and the hypocrite. 

 High cerebral capacity, profound penetration, good sense, varied information, 

 were the qualities which struck me as distinguishing Gall. The indifference 

 which I first felt for his writings, therefore, soon gave way to the most profound 

 veneration." (Introduction, p. 14.) 



In 1827, Dr. Vimont presented to the Institute a memoir containing a frag- 

 ment of the researches on which he had then spent so many years, together with 

 2500 heads of brutes of various classes, orders, genera, and species. Among 

 these, 1500 had belonged to brutes with whose habits he had been individually 

 well acquainted before they died, or were killed : 400 wax representations of 

 the brain, modelled after nature, and an atlas of more than 300 figures of the 

 brain and cranium, executed with the strictest accuracy of dimensions, also ac- 

 companied the memoir. The work in which he now sets forth his observations 

 has an atlas of 120 exquisite plates, containing above 600 figures. The accuracy 

 of dimensions is said to surpass any thing before attempted in anatomy ; and, if 

 the immense mass of proofs of phrenology from the human head, and the facts 

 pointed out by Gall, in brutes, were not sufficieht to convince the most preju- 

 diced, the additional multitude amassed by Dr. Vimont will overwhelm them. 



These are the great merits of the work : I would willingly pass over its faults ; 

 but antiphrenologists vvill point them out, and, therefore, it is as well at once to 

 express my regret at the self-conceit which pervades it. The author has given 

 what he terms English as well as French explanations of the plates, but, 

 from not availing himself of the assistance of some one possessing a better 

 knowledge of our language, his blunders are irresistibly ludicrous. He 

 brings Gall's knowledge and labours as low as posible, in order to elevate 

 his own, and commits great injustice. (Vol. i. p. 15. (Not aware that Gall had 



All know that sexual desires are so connected with the genital organs as 

 generally to commence when these become mature, and be prevented by their 

 removal during childhood ; but the world does not, therefore, decline to punish 

 ravishers and adulterers. The circumstances are precisely the same with all the 

 cerebral organs of propensity. 



