The Growth of the Brain. By H. H. Donaldson. "
Contem- porary Science" Series. (Walter Scott.)—Technical as is Professor Donaldson's study of the brain in relation to education, it has a great fascination. He gives us numerous tables by which we can gauge the growth of the brain from year to year, the com- parative growth of male and female brains, and the influence of education on the cranial capacity. The weight of different com- ponents of the brain in mental disease are, of course, of great scientific interest, being, indeed, a guide, though a faint one, to, the locality of functions. One of the tables is somewhat curious, it compares the brain-weights of murderers and eminent men with two groups of modern Parisians ; and the criminals are almost superior to the Parisians, though, of course, greatly inferior to the eminent men ; but then the criminals are perhaps Parisian, and that accounts for it. The chapters on the physiology of the brain, the localisation of functions, and on its construction are hardly less interesting.
Previous page
