68 Phrenology. 



were also mine : and of this number were the late Dr. James 

 Gregory, the late Dr. John Murray, and the late Dr. John Barclay.* 

 Among these gentlemen — all of whom were very able in their 

 respective departments, Dr. Barclay was particularly distinguished 

 for his extraordinary talents and science ; and although he was 

 only a private lecturer on anatomy, so highly was his course ap- 

 preciated, that many students of the University, after paying for the 

 ticket of the Professor, took also that of Dr. Barclay, and in great 

 numbers crowded his anatomical theatre. Among many others, 

 I was one of his attentive hearers. 



Dr. Barclay did not confine himself merely to the technical 

 anatomy of the human frame : he was in the habit of illustrating 

 the natural history of man, by comparing man with himself, and 

 man also with the inferior animals, thus opening to us the rich 

 field of comparative anatomy. Mr. Combe has mentioned that 

 Dr. Barclay made it an important object to trace the progress of 

 intelligence through the lower animals up to man, and through 

 the principal families of the human race. Although, at that time, 

 phrenology was hardly known in Britain, even by name. Dr. 

 Barclay was, perhaps unconsciously, demonstrating the fundamen- 

 tal principles of the science. 



I have much pleasure in confirming the statement of Mr. 

 Combe, having often seen Dr. Barclay's tables covered with skulls, 

 arranged in a series, beginning v/ith some of the less intelligent 

 of the lower orders of animals and then ascending in regular gra- 

 dation through the more intelligent, up to man. 



It was his great object to prove that the facial angle originally 

 indicated by Camper, was the type of intelligence, it being larger 

 as the head to which it belongs is more highly endowed with 

 intellect. 



It w411 be remembered, that in man, the facial angle is included 

 between two lines, one of which is drawn through the external 

 opening of the ear, under the zygomatic arch and just beneath 

 the cheek bone to the base of the nose, while the intersecting 

 line passes along from the middle of the forehead over the inner 



* The painful word late I am happy to withhold from two of the eminent men to 

 whom I then listened, Dr. Thomas Thomson, now the Regius Professor of Chemis- 

 try in the University of Glasgow, and Dr. Thomas Hope, still the veteran Professor of 

 Chemistry in the University of Edinburgh, both of whom happily survive in vigor 

 and usefulness. Prof. Jameson and Sir David Brewster, whose orbs were then in 

 the ascendant, are now evening stars of the first magnitude. 



