TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 



151 



I 



to by a uuiltitude of other observers, and is, to luy mind, one of tlie most dis- 

 tiuctive mai'ks of savagery as opposed to civilization. It is only iu times of 

 civilization that men of the puny stature of Tydeiis or Agesilaus are allowed their 

 proper place in the niauagemeut of affairs. And men of such physical size, 

 coupled with such mental calibre, may take comfort, if they need it, from the 

 jiirely quantitative consideration, that large as are the individual slaills from pre- 

 -listoric graves, and high, too, as is the average obtained from a number of them, it 

 has ne\'ertheles3 not been shown that the largest individual skulls of those days were 

 larger than, or, indeed, as large as the best skulls of our own days ; whilst the 

 high average capacity which the former series shows is readily explicable by the 

 very obvious consideration that the poorer specimens of humanity, if allowed to live 

 at all in those days, were, at any rate, when dead not allowed sepulture in the 

 "tombs of the kings," from which nearly exclusively we obtain our prehistoric 

 crania. M. Broca* has given us yet further ground for retaining our self-com- 

 placency by showing, from his extensive series of measurements of the crania from 

 successive epochs in Parisian burial-places, that the average capacity has gone on 

 steadily increasing. 



It may be suggested that a large brain, as calculated by the cubage of the skull, 

 may nevertheless have been a comparatively lowly organized one, from having its 

 molecular constitution qualitatively inferior "from the nemoglia being developed to 

 the disadvantage of the neuriue, or from having its convolutions few and simple, 

 and being thus poorer in the aggregate mass of its grey vesicular matter. It is 

 perhaps, impossible to dispose absolutely of either of these suggestions. But, as re- 

 gards the tirst, it seems to me to be exceedingly improbable that such could have 

 been the case. For in cases where an overgTowth of neuroglia has given the brain 

 increase of bullc without giving it increase of its true nervous elements, the Scotch 

 proverb, " Muckle brain, little wit" applies; and the relatively inferior intelligence 

 of the owners of such brains as seen nowadays may, on the principle of continuity, 

 be supposed to have attached to the owners of such brains in former times. But 

 those times were times of a severer struggle for existence than even the present ; and 

 inferior intelligences, and specially the inferior quickness and readiness observable 

 iu such cases, it may well be supposed, would have fared worse then than now. 

 There is, however, no need for this supposition ; for, as a matter of fact, the brain- 

 case of brains so hypertrophied t has a very readily recognizable shape of its own, 

 and this shape is not the shape of the Cro-Magnon skidl, nor indeed of any of the 

 Prehistoric skulls with which I am acquainted. 



As regards the second suggestion, to the effect that a large braiucase may have 

 contained a brain the convolutions of which were simple, broad, and coarse, and 

 which made up by consequence a sheet of grey matter of less square area than that 

 made up in a brain of similar size but of more complex and slenderer convolu- 

 tions, I have to say that it is possible this may have been the case, but that it seems 

 to me by no means lilcely. Very large skulls are sometimes found amongst collec- 

 tions purporting to have come from very savage or degraded races ; such a skull 

 may be seen in the London College of Surgeons with a label, '' 5357 D. Bushman, 

 G. Williams. Presented by Sir John Lubbock ;" and, from what Professor 

 Marshall and Gratiolet have taught us as to other Bushman brains, smaller, it is 

 true, in size, we may be inclined to thinlc that the brain which this large skull once 

 contained may nevertheless have been much simpler in its convolutions than a 

 European brain of similar size would be. This skull, however, is an isolated 

 instance of such proportions amongst Bushman skulls, so far, at least, as I have 

 been able to discover ; whilst the skulls of Prehistoric times, though not invariably, 

 are yet most ordinarily large skulls. A large brain with coarse convolutions puts 

 its possessor at a disadvantage in the struggle for existence, as its greater size is not 

 compensated by greater dynamical activity ; and hence I should be slow to explain 



* See his paper, 'Bull. See. Anthrop. de Paris,' t. iii. ser. i. 18G2, p. 102; or his collected 

 Memoires, vol. i. p. 348, 1871. 



t I may, perhaps, be allowed to express here my surprise at the statement made by Messrs. 

 Wilks and xMoxon, in their very valuable Pathological Anatomy, pp. 217, 218, to the effect 

 that they have not met with such cases of Cerebral Hypertrophy. They were common 

 enough at the Children's Hospital iu Great Ormond Street when I was attaclied to it. 



