[4.] “Ganglia.” Collections of nerve cells, from which nerve fibers are given off in different directions. They are thought to be the organs in which all action originates.
[5.] “Ventral surface.” The surface of the body opposite the back. The back is called the dorsal surface.
[6.] “Medˈul-la-ry.” Consisting of marrow. The fibrous nervous matter of the brain contains nerve tubes, within which is a layer of thick, fluid, highly refractive matter, called the medullary layer.
PARAGRAPHS FROM NEW BOOKS.
Portraits from Carlyle.—If Carlyle had taken to the brush instead of to the pen he would probably have left a gallery of portraits such as this century has not seen. In his letters and journals, reminiscences, etc., for him to mention a man is to describe his face, and with what graphic pen and ink sketches they abound. Let me extract a few of them. Here is Rousseau’s face, from “Heroes and Hero Worship:” “A high but narrow contracted intensity in it; bony brows; deep, straight-set eyes, in which there is something bewildered looking—bewildered, peering with lynx-eagerness—a face full of misery, even ignoble misery, and also of an antagonism against that; something mean, plebeian there, redeemed only by intensity: the face of what is called a fanatic—a sadly contracted hero!…”
Here we have Dickens in 1840: “Clear-blue, intelligent eyes; eyebrows that he arches amazingly; large, protrusive, rather loose mouth; a face of most extreme mobility, which he shuttles about—eyebrows, eyes, mouth, and all—in a very singular manner while speaking. Surmount this with a loose coil of common-colored hair, and set it on a small, compact figure, very small, and dressed à la D’Orsay rather than well—this is Pickwick.”
Here is a glimpse of Grote, the historian of Greece: “A man with straight upper lip, large chin, and open mouth (spout mouth); for the rest, a tall man, with dull, thoughtful brows and lank, disheveled hair, greatly the look of a prosperous Dissenting minister.”
In telling Emerson whom he shall see in London, he says: “Southey’s complexion is still healthy mahogany brown, with a fleece of white hair, and eyes that seem running at full gallop; old Rogers, with his pale head, white, bare, and cold as snow, with those large blue eyes, cruel, sorrowful, and that sardonic shelf chin.”