THE CAN^ADIAN JOURNAL. 



NEW SERIES. 



No. XCII. — OCTOBEE, 1876. 



BRAIN-WEIGHT AND SIZE IN RELATION TO 

 RELATIVE CAPACITY OF RACES. 



BY DANIEL WILSON, LL.D., F.B.S.E. 



Read lefore the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at Buffalo, N. T. 

 esth August, 1876. 



Consistently -witli the recognition of the brain as the organ of intel- 

 lectual activity, it seems not unnatural to assume for man, as the 

 rational animal, a very distinctive cerebral development. One of the 

 most distinguished of living naturalists, Professor Owen, has even 

 made this organ the basis of a system of classification, by means of 

 which he separates man into a su.b-class distinct from all other mam- 

 malia. But while a comparison between man and the anthropoid 

 apes, as the animals most nearly approximating to him in physical 

 structure, lends confirmation to the idea not only that a well de- 

 veloped brain is essential to natural activity, but that there is a close 

 relation between the development of the brain and the manifestation 

 of intellectual power : the distinctive features in the human brain, 

 as compared with those of the anthropomorpha, prove to be greatly 

 less than had been assumed under imperfect knowledge. The sub- 

 stantial difference is in volume. " No one, I presume," says Darwin, 

 " doubts that the large size of the brain in man, relatively to his body, 

 in comparison to that of the gorilla or orang, is closely coimeeted 

 with his higher mental powers ;" * and it might not unfairly be rea- 

 soned from analogy, that the same test distinguishes the intellectual 



* " The Desceat of Man," Part I., chap. iv. 



