180 BRAIN- WEIGHT AND SIZE IN RELATION 



occupy in relation to cranial capacity and cerebral weight corresponds 

 with the degree of their intellectual capacity and civilization."* But 

 the position thus confidently assigned to the Polynesians receives no 

 confirmation from the evidence supplied by the measurements of Dr. 

 J. B. Davis, in his Thesav/rus Craniorum ; and a careful study of 

 the subject reveals other remarkable deviations from such a scale of 

 progTession, not only in individuals but in races. To these excep- 

 tional deviations, with their bearing on the comparative capacity of 

 races, the following remarks are chiefly directed. The largest and 

 heaviest brains do indeed appear, for the most part, to pertaui to the 

 nations highest in civilization, and to the most intelligent of their 

 number. But this cannot be asserted as a uniform law, either in 

 relation to races or individuals. The more carefully the requisite 

 evidence is accumulated, the less does it appear that the volume of 

 brain, or the cubic contents of the skull, supply any uniform gauge 

 of intellectual capacity. In the researches which have thus far been 

 instituted into the characteristics of the human brain among the 

 lowest races, the development is in many respects remarkable ; and, 

 as was to be expected, no organic difierences between diverse races 

 of men have been traced. 



Professor C. Luigi Calori has published the results of a careful 

 examination of the brain of a Negro of Guinea. It presented the 

 marked excess of length over breadth so characteristic of the Negro 

 cranium ; but in other respects it corresponded generally to the fully 

 developed European brain. The distribution of the white and gray 

 substances was the same ; the cerebral convolutions were collected 

 into an equal number of "lobes ; and the only special drfference was 

 that the convolutions were a HttJe less frequently folded, and the 

 separating sulci somewhat less marked than in the average European 

 brain. But even in this respect the complication was great. The 

 actual weight- of the brain, according to Professor Calori, was 1,260 

 grammes, equivalent to 44-4 cubic inches. The complexity of convo- 

 lution, and consequent extension of superficies of the encephalon, ap- 

 pears to be an essential element in the development of the brain as the 

 organ of highest mental capacity ; and to the cerebrum, apparently, 

 the true functions of intellectual activity pertain. Professor Wagner 

 undertook the measurement of the convex surface of the frontal 

 lobe in a series of brains. The heaviest, as a rule, had also the greatest 



* Yogt, " Lectures on Man. " Lect III 



