TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 145 
external survey, but that the bony coverings should be removed, and, under the 
guidance of the chart provided by the indefatigable Gratiolet, the cerebral convo- 
Tutions themselves should be thoroughly examined, and carefully compared and 
contrasted with each other, in all the typical races. When this has been done, but 
not until then, shall we, in his opinion, have a clue likely to unravel and elucidate 
many of the existing obscurities appertaining to their psychological differences. 
Much as it is to be regretted that the brains of the lowest and most degraded of 
the human races have been so little examined, it is now to be hoped that, in respect 
to the aboriginal tribes at the Cape of Good Hope, in Australia, and, within reach, 
the Hill Men of India, as well as elsewhere, medical men will be found to supply 
this desideratum of ethno-psychology. This accomplished, he thinks we all 
cease to wonder how it happens that the North American Indians, on the very 
confines of civilization, should remain uncivilized—the same wandering lawless 
savages which they were when Columbus first set his foot among them ; how their 
wigwams and the miserable bark huts of the aborigines of New Holland should 
have been swept away before the flood-tide of European civilization—those home- 
less savages themselves seeking refuge in the desert and the mountain ; and, again, 
among the Mongolian nations of Asia, that we shall be better enabled to compre- 
hend how it is that their civilization, so early attained, has not progressed, but re- 
mained stationary : China, boasting of a civilization nearly as old as that of Egypt, 
has remained stationary for thirty centuries. Lastly, even among the European 
nations, the distinctive characters of the Saxon and the Celt, he is inclined to he- 
lieve, will be found to be engraven on their brains. 
As instances from savage life, he views, in contrast, the African Negro and the 
North American Indian, with the intent of showing, so far as the subject has 
hitherto been investigated, what light the differences in their cerebral developments 
can throw on their respective characters, mental manifestations, and destinies. 
Among the Negro tribes there is a great variety, and much difference in their 
mental endowments. Some have become excellent mechanics, others clerks and 
accountants, while others have remained mere labourers, incapable of any intellec- 
tual attainments, and characterized by low and receding foreheads. When free 
from pain and hunger, the life of the Negro is one of enjoyment. As soon as his 
toils are for a moment suspended, he sings, he seizes his fiddle, he dances. Easily 
excitable, and in the highest degree susceptible of all the passions, he is more 
especially so of those of the mild and gentle affections. The American Indians, on 
the contrary, are averse to civilization, and slow in acquiring knowledge. They are 
restless, stern, silent, and moody, and to them a ruminating life is a burden. They 
are revengeful, wild, vindictive, cunning, but wholly destitute of maritime adven~ 
ture; too dangerous to be trusted by the white man in social intercourse, and too 
obtuse and intractable to be worth coercing into servitude. 
The Negro is Dolichocephalic, the Indian Brachycephalic, and both are progna- 
thous. Their cranial and cerebral differences are striking. The skull of the Negro 
is long, but narrow, and the forehead low, but it rises higher, and is more developed 
in the intellectual and moral regions, than that of the Indian ; the occiput is large. 
In the Red Indian the skull is small, and short from front to back; it is wide be- 
tween the parietal protuberances, prominent at the vertex, and flat at the occiput; 
its great deficiency lies in the superior and lateral parts of the forehead. The ante- 
rior lobe of the brain in the Negro and Indian is small, while in the European it is 
large, in proportion to the middle lobe. The posterior lobe of the Indian is small, 
but the vertex of the middle lobe is prominent, and the brain is wide between the 
parcial protuberances. In the Negro the posterior lobe is more fully developed, 
ut it isin the European brain that it reaches its maximum development. Both 
in the Negro and Indian the cerebral hemispheres are pointed and narrow in front, 
and their transverse convolutions in the frontal lobes are markedly conspicuous 
for the simplicity and regularity of their arrangement, and for the perfect symmetry 
which they exhibit in both of the hemispheres, when compared and contrasted 
with the complexity and irregularity which are presented in the brain of the 
European. Such diiferences as these, the author considered, warrant the inference 
that, alike in the Negro and the Indian, the nervous apparatus of the perceptive 
and intellectual consciousness falls far short of that fulness, elaboration, and com- 
1862, 
