Vice-President’s Address. 15 
Parietal Lobe—According to Cunningham, “one of the 
leading peculiarities of the human brain is the relative great 
antero-posterior extent of the parietal lobe, and this is 
attained by a corresponding decrease in the length of the 
occipital lobe.” 
The parietal lobe in certain of the lower apes is traversed 
by a fissure which runs upwards and backwards, and divides 
the lobe into an antero-superior and a_ postero-inferior 
portion. This fissure is figured very distinctly in the brains 
of various apes by Gratiolet. In 1866 it was described and 
named intra-parietal by Sir Wm. Turner in an account of 
the brain of a chimpanzee, published in the Proceedings of 
the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 
About the same time he recognised it as being present also 
in the human brain. In the same year, but a little later, 
Dr Adolf Pansch, of Kiel, independently described it under 
the name of sulcus parietalis. Many anatomists have since 
worked at this fissure, and it is now well established that, in 
the higher Primates, it is composed of at least four fissural 
elements, which Cunningham names sulcus verticalis superior, 
suleus verticalis inferior, sulcus horizontalis, and sulcus 
occipitalis. ‘Turner’s original description of this fissure, in 
his paper on “The Convolutions of the Human Cerebrum 
topographically considered,” is as follows :— 
“ Intra-parietal Fissure—This fissure is figured in all the 
more accurate drawings of the human and quadrumanous 
brain, though no special description has been given of it. 
It lies within the parietal lobe, from which circumstance I 
have named it intra-parietal. It may be recognised by the 
sixth month of intra-uterine life. It is situated immediately 
behind and ascends parallel to the ascending parietal gyrus, 
and then bends almost horizontally backwards, and extends 
for a varying distance in different brains; in some cases it 
may be traced between the first and second bridging con- 
volutions, as in the right hemisphere of figs. 1 and 2. Its 
ascending part separates the supra-marginal gyrus from the 
ascending parietal ; its horizontal part separates the supra- 
marginal gyrus from the ascending parietal lobe. Not 
unfrequently one or more secondary gyri bridge it across 
