760 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



gradually produced that increase of brain capacity which now distinguishes the 

 civilized from the savage races of mankind. Nowhere has this influence been 

 more conspicuous than in China, whose culture, if not of the most advanced 

 kind, has the advantage over all others in the great length of time it has endured. 

 The Chinese are, as might have been expected, a big-brained people; indeed, the 

 only statistics of Chinese brain-weights available show them to exceed all, other 

 nations in this respect. A few years ago the brain-weights of eleven adult male 

 and of five female Chinese — the chance victims of a great typhoon at Hong 

 Kong — were obtained. These belong, with one exception, to the Coolie, or 

 lowest grade of Chinese society, and yet the average brain-weight of the males 

 reached 50^ ounces, and that of the females 45^ ounces. This is an average 

 not attained, so far as yet known, by any other nation, it being fully two ounces 

 above that of the average negro, one and a half ounces above the European, and 

 one-half ounce above the average Scotchman- That civilization has been the 

 main cause of increase in the size of the brain there can be little doubt. To ad- 

 mit, therefore, that the heads of the British people are now growing smaller, would 

 be to confess that the resources of civilization were indeed exhausted, and that, 

 as a people, we had begun a retrograde journey toward the barbarism from which 

 we originally emerged. — Edinburgh Scotsman. 



THE MORALITY OF THE OPIUM TRADE. 



Having afforded space on several occasions to papers expressing the views of 

 the majority on the question of the habitual use of opium, it may be of interest to 

 place on record the statements of the minority. Dr. George Birdwood, late Pro- 

 fessor of Materia Medica, a curator of the Government Economic Museum, writes 

 in the Times, of London, as follows : 



In view of the undiscriminating agitation which is being manufactured all 

 over the country against the Indian opium revenue (amounting to from ;^7,ooo,- 

 000 to ^,{^9, 000, 000 sterling a year), on the ground of its imputed immorality, I 

 beg the favor of being allowed to place on record the opinion which I have been 

 led, by years of intimate study and observations in Bombay, to form of the ef- 

 fects of the habitual use of opium on the people of the East. I do not propose 

 to enter into the economical questions of the Indian opium revenue or into the 

 political question of our alleged forcing the importation of the drug on the Chi- 

 nese. I shall confine myself as much as possible to my personal experience of 

 the general effects of smoking, eating, and drinking opium on the Chinese, Mussul- 

 mans and Hindoos of West India. 



As regards opium s}?ioking, I can, from experience, testify that it is of itself 

 absolutely harmless. I should like those who have been led to believe, on the 

 unscientific observations of others, that it is harmful, to simply try it experiment- 

 ally for themselves, under proper precautions, of course, against the risk of using 

 the imperfectly prepared chandu or " smokable extract" of opium. I feel satis- 



