1892.] Brain Centres. 737 
account for the obsolescing features of the major in man, and 
the absence of the minor below the apes. 
The minor projects into the occipital lobe in the region 
allotted to optic intelligence. The relative sizes of the hippo- 
campi may be explained by remembering that millions of 
years may have been occupied by Mammalia with olfaction 
as the main means of food discrimination in their evolution, 
and that relatively much less time has elapsed since the apes 
and man first appeared. The hippocampus minor develops as 
the optic sense becomes the superior means of food judgment ; 
and as the olfactory importance diminishes, the hippocampus 
major degenerates. 
That the taste and olfactory centres are not definitely deter- 
mined depends, in my opinion, upon the intimate blending of 
these senses with motor eating centres, paralysis of which 
becomes so noticeable as to overshadow the sense loss, which 
latter may be overlooked or regarded as not necessarily an 
associated derangement. Lesion of the temporal lobes destroy- 
ing the smelling sense may indicate no more than that olfac- 
tory fibres pass through those parts. Taste has reflex 
connections of a lower than cerebral nature that regulate 
many involuntary acts concerned in eating, but by associa- 
tion pretty extensive brain distributions are also concerned, 
more particularly optic, and the glosso-labial motor areas near 
the sulcus of Rolando. So we may say taste and smell are 
more generalized than centralized through the brain, and that 
in man the smelling sense is losing importance. 
CoNSCIOUSNESS is at its fullest when we possess every 
faculty intact. Deprivation of the special senses necessarily 
interferes with consciousness, though, as in the Laura Bridg- 
man case, the possession of a single sense, which has been 
trained to subserve purposes of contact and communication 
with the outer world, may suffice. Circulatory disturbances 
in the brain affect consciousness in various ways, sometimes 
abolishing it for a time. Proper regard for these and other 
such matters as sleep, epilepsy, compression of the brain, and 
a multitude of considerations requiring too much space to even 
epitomize here, lead me to deny that consciousness has any 
