506 PROFESSOR MARSHALL ON THE BRAIN OE A BTJSHWOMAN ; AND 
as low as 46 '7 cubic inches *. Between all these examples, however, the stature having 
been neglected, comparisons, to say the least, must be inexact ; and the height of the 
Bushwoman, a fair average one even for a European female, must not be forgotten in 
any estimate of the dimensions of her cranial cavity. 
In the Bushwoman’s head no evidence of arrested development exists, either in the 
character of the bones, or in the sutures, or in the features of the face, though a suppo- 
sition of that kind has been entertained, yet not generally assented to, in regard to the 
so-called Hottentot Venus. Certain infantile characters are undoubtedly present in the 
cranium of the Bushwoman — such as the slight elevation of the nasal bones, the absence 
of the frontal sinuses, the small size of the mastoid processes, the slenderness of the 
styloid processes, and the markings on the inner surface of the cranium; but these 
characters should probably be regarded rather as belonging to sex or race than as indi- 
cative of any arrest of development in the individual, especially as the general propor- 
tions between the face and the cranium, the dolichocephalic form of the latter, the 
prominent cheek-bones, the square jaw, and the well-marked chin would lead to the 
opposite inference of a perfected individual development. 
b. Weights of the Encephalon and its parts. 
The entire encephalon of the Bushwoman, hardened in spirit and deprived of its mem- 
branes, weighed 21*77 oz. The loss of weight in specimens of brain preserved in a similar 
way I find to be from one-third to one-fourth, i. e., as a mean, -^ths of their original 
weight, on which calculation the recent Bushwoman’s brain, deprived of its membranes, 
would weigh exactly 30*75 oz. With the membranes, the weight would be about 31*5 oz. 
The capacity of the skull, as already stated, was equal to 35 oz. avoirdupois of water, 
or 60*64 cubic inches. If the brain, in its natural state, filled the cranial cavity as com- 
pletely as water will afterwards, it would be easy, by taking the specific gravity of 
nervous substance as compared with water, to estimate the quantity of brain which once 
occupied any given skull ; but the fact that this is not the case, especially in regard to 
the base of the brain, and the difficulty of determining the weight of the membranes, 
the amount of blood which the vessels may contain, and the quantity of cerebro-spinal 
fluid which fills the ventricles and all otherwise unoccupied spaces, render it impossible 
thus to arrive at so definite an estimate as in the other way. 
Now the smallest healthy European female brain recorded by Wagner weighed about 
31*7 oz.f ; and the smallest observed by Dr. Reid, in the case of an aged woman, 32 oz.J 
These numbers, however, are unsatisfactory, as neither the heights nor the weights of 
the individuals are on record. But Dr. Boyd’s valuable Tables § supply this omission, 
and thus enable us to appreciate the comparative size of the Bushwoman’s brain. 
Among 149 females between the ages of 60 and 70 years, the minimum weight of the 
* TrEDEmjsrN and Huschee, quoted by Schaafhausen, Muller’s ‘ Archiv,’ 1858. 
t Loc. cit. J London and Edinburgh Monthly Journal, &c., April 1843. 
§ Philosophical Transactions, vol. cli. p. 251. 
