November 4, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



613 



whose brain Eetzius now describes is not re- 

 vealed in connection with this study, owing 

 to the refusal of the sons of the deceased to 

 accord permission to divulge the name. 

 Eetzius had, however, known him well since 

 his youth and presents a few general remarks 

 concerning the subject's intellectual capacity. 

 The man showed great aptitude for learning 

 early in life, was very successful in his studies 

 at school and under the faculty of law. He 

 rapidly advanced to the position of Minister 

 of Finance (age 37) and three years after to 

 that of Prime Minister. He was a provincial 

 governor up to the time of his death at the 

 age of 53. He is described as a highly gifted 

 jurist, statesman, thinker, orator and philan- 

 thropist. Of large stature, dolichocephalic 

 and of blond complexion, he belonged to the 

 genuine Swedish type. His brain, removed 

 on the second day after death by Dr. Curt 

 Wallis, weighed 1489 grams. It was pre- 

 served in a mixture of 3 per cent, potassium 

 bichromate and 2 per cent, formal, suspended 

 in the fluid by a string tied to the basilar 

 artery. The form of the brain was thus well 

 preserved. As in all of Eetzius' memoirs, this 

 study is accompanied by beautifully executed 

 photogravures and contour drawings. 



The brain is well formed and richly convo- 

 luted. Viewed dorsally its shape is symmet- 

 rically ovoid with the greatest width in the 

 subparietal region. The height is rather re- 

 duced. The association areas of the frontal 

 and parietal regions exhibit a richness and 

 complexity of fissuration, but there is hardly 

 any noteworthy characteristic or redundancy 

 of development in any particular territory. 

 Nor were such findings to be expected. In 

 life the man showed a well balanced intellect; 

 his aptitudes were good in all directions, not 

 in any special direction alone. Endowed with 

 an excellent memory and good reasoning pow- 

 ers, he showed great skill and clearness of 

 thought in parliamentary debate, without 

 necessarily availing himself of purely rheto- 

 rical art. While not naturally devoted to 

 any particular branch of the sciences, creative 

 arts or human action, he could familiarize 

 himself with all of these in the way of facile 

 general understanding. This harmonius con- 



struction of the mental abilities is in no small 

 measure correlative with that species of sym- 

 metry which this brain exhibited, and which 

 is certainly exceptional in the richly convo- 

 luted brains of persons of highly developed 

 but rather one-sided mental superiority. It 

 may be noted, however, that the left sub-- 

 frontal gyre (' Broca's gyrus,' the motor 

 speech center) is somewhat favored in its de- 

 velopment as compared with the same region 

 on the right side. 



Edw. Anthony Spitzka. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 

 Columbia University has been celebrating 

 the hundredth and fiftieth anniversary of its 

 foundation as King's College during the past 

 week. A large reception was given by the 

 trustees on the afternoon of October 28. On 

 the morning of October 31, the cornerstones 

 of the School of Mines building, of a chapel, 

 and of two dormitories were laid, and the 

 physical training building of Teachers Col- 

 lege was dedicated; in the afternoon a uni- 

 versity convocation was held, and President 

 Butler gave a commemorative address. Hon- 

 orary degrees were conferred on thirty-three 

 alumni, including Francis Delafield, M.D., 

 1863, emeritus professor of the practice of 

 medicine in the College of Physicians and 

 Surgeons, Columbia University; Edward 

 Gamaliel Janeway, M.D., 1864, dean of the 

 University and Bellevue Hospital Medical 

 College; William Mecklenburg Polk, M.D., 

 1869, dean of the Cornell University Medical 

 College; John Green Curtis, M.D., 1870, pro- 

 fessor of physiology in Columbia University; 

 William Henry Welch, M.D., 1875, professor 

 of pathology in the Johns Hopkins Univer- 

 sity; Andrew James McCosh, M.D., 1880, 

 visiting surgeon at the Presbyterian Hospital ; 

 Walter Kelnap James, M.D., 1883, professor 

 of the practice of medicine in Columbia Uni- 

 versity and visiting physician at Eoosevelt 

 and Presbyterian Hospitals ; William Bleecker 

 Potter, A.B., 1866, E.M., 1869, mining and 

 metallurgical engineer ; Henry Smith Munroe, 

 E.M., 1869, Ph.D., 1877, professor of mining 

 in Columbia University; Frederick Eemsen 

 lUitton, A.B., 1873, E.M., C.E., 1876, Ph.D., 



