138 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. X. No. 241 



facial nerve, was especially important. Dr. Mendel experimented 

 by destroying the muscles supplied by these nerve-branches (mainly 

 the muscle raising the upper eyelid) in young animals, and then ob- 

 served the atrophy of nerve fibre and cell in the central nervous 

 system. He found that the origin of this nerve-branch was not, 

 as is currently supposed, in the general nucleus of the facial nerve, 

 but in the posterior part of the nucleus of the oculo-motor nerve. 

 This is another evidence to the fact that the nerve-centres are 

 arranged for co-ordination of function (not for topographical con- 

 venience), those nerves arising from a common centre as must fre- 

 quently act together in exciting a useful movement. 



Dr. Spitzka of New York showed the cerebellum of a child of five 

 years, who had never learned to speak or walk. The cerebellum 

 was enormously asymmetric, and the entire brain and much of the 

 body presented striking abnormalities. 



Dr. Homen of Finland described a distinction between the motor 

 and sensory areas of the spinal nerves as brought about by atrophy 

 resulting from amputations. Dr. Otto of Munich advocated the use 

 of magenta as a staining for sections of the nervous system. 



Quite a number of papers of much too general a character were 

 presented. Such papers, however valuable in themselves, are too 

 much the record of individual opinions to be profitably presented at 

 an international meeting. Such questions as the ' definition of in- 

 sanity," ' the classification of insanity,' and the like, are sure to be 

 profitless ; at least, until we know much more of the pathological 

 nature of mental aberration than we do now. A very opposite criti- 

 cism is to be passed upon the discussion on the relation of syphilis 

 to insanity, which aroused much interest, and was practically and 

 profitably conducted. The leader in the discussion was Dr. G. H. 

 Savage of Bethlem, England. 



MENTAL SCIENCE. 



The Chronological Progress of Infants. 



The scientific observation of the early stages of development of 

 the human infant, though no longer a novelty, can be said to have 

 yielded only the first suggestions of the valuable generalizations 

 which this study is destined in part to discover and in part to cor- 

 roborate. Amongst these generalizations the most important is that 

 psychological law which finds its analogue in the embryological law 

 that the early life-stages of a species high in the animal scale re- 

 peat in part the mature stages of an animal lower in the scale, and 

 announces that the mental development of the child repeats in part 

 the development of the race. The many and suggestive analogies 

 between the emotional traits and thought-habits of children and 

 of savages have been frequently recorded, and their importance is 

 more and more widely appreciated. Nor has the practical aspect 

 of infant psychology been neglected. Once educators have recog- 

 nized that this study promises a surer basis for early school-room 

 work than any amount of simplification of exercises originally ar- 

 ranged for more mature minds, it makes the teacher learn from as 

 well as teach the pupil. One educational body has asked for sys- 

 tematic records of child-growth, bodily and mental, and a few nor- 

 mal schools are substituting for the dry and often narrow course in 

 ' Methods of Teaching," a practical and original essay recording ob- 

 servations of various traits of child-life. One main purpose in all 

 such records has been to get an average of the date and order of 

 appearance of the several acts, instincts, emotions, ideas, and so on, 

 in the child. In the process of obtaining such an average, much in- 

 formation will at the same time be gained as to the range of varia- 

 tion in time of appearance of the several traits, of the influence of sex, 

 of heredity, of nationality, and of environment upon them. When 

 such a record will be at our command, the rate of progress of any 

 particular child, whether precocious or backward, will be easily 

 ascertainable, and much energy be saved in propping up what needs 

 support, in checking over-development of certain traits, and thus pro- 

 moting that harmonious all-sided growth which modern education 

 regards as its ideal. The caution in the process should be in the 

 direction of remembering the individualvariationas well as the aver- 

 age, — that by nature men are far from being alike, and civilization 

 requires them to be so only in a very restricted though important 

 field of activity. 



Dr. Stanford E. Chaille of the Tulane University has recently 



put together, in a form very convenient for others to supplement 

 and perfect, the various stages of infant progress. He gives in a 

 series of brief paragraphs the chief acquisitions which the average 

 infant may be expected to exhibit for each month of the first year of 

 life, and at intervals of several months from then to the third year. 

 The acts whose appearance he notices include the physical signs as 

 well as the actions on which mental growth is founded. As the 

 article of Dr. Chaille is itself a risicmi, it will hardly be profitable to 

 further epitomize the facts there given. Referring to the original 

 paper for the facts (New Orleans Medical a7id Stirgical Journal, 

 June, 1887), it will be sufficient to state that they record the vari- 

 ous reflexes (sucking, crying, sneezing, etc.) existing from birth, the 

 order of the development of the senses (taste first) and the gradual 

 change in their relative educational importance, the accommodation 

 to the environment, the interpretation of the objective world (as the 

 inference of distance by sight), the emotional evolution (fear being 

 the first emotion), the expressions of pleasure and pain, the co-ordi- 

 nation of the muscle-movement into acts, the gradual voluntary con- 

 trol of hands and feet, the first sounds and attempts at language, 

 the appreciation of colors, sounds, odors, and so on. The general 

 conviction which this study has left upon Dr. Chaille's mind is not 

 in harmony with the popular belief that children are to a larger ex- 

 tent than adults virtuous and guileless, but agrees with the evolu- 

 tionary notion that the virtues which civilization has taught us to 

 admire are of recent growth, and not innate in the infant, whom it 

 is more truthful to regard as a ' darling little savage," than as a 

 ' dear httle angel." 



A point on which this paper is especially complete is the increase 

 of weight, height, and chest-girth with each month of the first 

 year of life, and at longer intervals from then to maturity. During 

 the first three days of life there is a loss of weight, which should 

 be regained by the seventh day. The greatest gain of weight oc- 

 curs during the first five months, the maximum amount of growth 

 falling probably in the second month, when the increase is from 

 four to seven ounces weekly. From then on, the regular increase 

 of growth which the table records takes place, leaving more room 

 for individual variation with increase of age. 



The Effect OF Opium on the Higher Animals. — It has 

 recently been observed that opium affects apes just as it does men, 

 producing all of the physical symptoms, and strongly suggesting 

 the presence of some, at least, of the typical psychical accompani- 

 ments. A certain ape would always follow any opium-smoker, 

 would look for the remnants which the smoker left unused, would 

 cry when not admitted to the room where smoking was going on, 

 and so on. The habit takes the same possession of them that it 

 does of men. Apes who are in the habit of getting a little opium 

 are inactive, dull, and useless if they miss their usual dose ; and a 

 Chinese merchant is recorded as having a large ape who howls 

 piteously when his usual ration of the drug is denied him. Similar 

 effects have been observed in dogs, and strikingly illustrate the 

 functional similarity of the central nervous system of the higher 

 mammalia. 



A Challenge to the Evidence for Thought Phan- 

 tasms. — An article published in the Nineteenth Century for 

 August, by A. Taylor Innes, and entitled ' Where are the Letters ? ' 

 is in substance an attack on the nature of the evidence for death- 

 bed and other coincidences, which Messrs. Myers, Gurney, and 

 Podmore have collected in their ' Phantasms of the Living." Most 

 of these stories are those in which a friend or relative of the person 

 concerned is suddenly presented with a vivid impression that the 

 person in question, who is far distant, is threatened with danger ; 

 the case is then made out that the time of death of the individual 

 coincided with the moment of the apparition to his friend. In a 

 large number of cases documentary evidence of the simultaneity 

 of the two occurrences — as when two letters, each recording one 

 of the events, cross each other — is naturally obtainable ; and the 

 writer of the above article claims that in such cases the authors 

 have been satisfied with the mere statement that such evidence 

 existed without actually seeing the letters, and yet regarding such 

 evidence as of first-class value. An actual examination shows how 

 worthless such statements often are. In nine cases in which they 

 did see the original manuscript the evidence is declared unsatis- 



