| | | |
| | Capacity. | Brain-Weight. |
| Race. | Number. | Cubic Inches. | Oz. Av. |
| | | |
| | | |
| European | 299 | 92.3 | 47.12 |
| English | 21 | 93.1 | 47.50 |
| Asiatic | 124 | 87.1 | 44.44 |
| Chinese | 25 | 92.1 | 47.00 |
| Hindoos | 35 | 82.5 | 42.11 |
| Negroes | 16 | 86.4 | 44.08 |
| Negro Tribes | 69 | 85.2 | 43.47 |
| American Indians | 52 | 87.5 | 44.64 |
| Mexicans | 25 | 81.7 | 41.74 |
| Peruvians | 56 | 75.0 | 38.25 |
| Eskimos | 13 | 91.2 | 46.56 |
| Oceanic | 210 | 89.4 | 45.63 |
| Javans | 30 | 87.5 | 44.64 |
| Australians | 24 | 81.1 | 41.38 |
| | | |
Looking for some definite results from the various data here produced, the deductions which they seem to suggest may be thus stated. While Professor Wyman justly remarks that the relative capacity of the skull, and consequently of the encephalon, is to be considered as an anatomical and not as a physiological characteristic, relative largeness of the brain is nevertheless one of the most distinguishing attributes of man. Ample cerebral development is the general accompaniment of intellectual capacity, alike in individuals and races; and microcephaly, when it passes below well-defined limits, is no longer compatible with rational intelligence; though it amply suffices for the requirements of the highest anthropomorpha. Wagner thus definitely refers the special characteristics which separate man from the irrational creation to one member of the encephalon: “The relation of the lobes of the cerebrum to intelligence may, perhaps, be expressed thus: there is a certain development of the mass of the cerebrum, especially of the convolutions, requisite in order to such a development of intelligence as divides man from other animals.”
The important data accumulated by Morton, Meigs, Davis, Tiedemann, Pruner-Bey, Broca, and others, by the process of gauging the skulls of different races, proceeds on the assumption of brain of a uniform density. But it seems by no means improbable that certain marked distinctions in races may be traceable to the very fact of a prevailing difference in the specific gravity of the brain, or of certain of its constituent portions; to the greater or less complexity of its convolutions; and to the relative characteristics of the two hemispheres. Moreover, it may be that some of those sources of difference in races may not lie wholly out of our reach, or even beyond our control. The diversity of food, for example, of the Peruvians and of the American Indian hunter tribes was little less than that which distinguishes the Eskimo from the Hindoo, or the nomad Tartar from the Chinese. The remarkable cerebral capacity characteristic of the Oceanic races is the accompaniment of well-defined peculiarities in food, climate, and other physical conditions; and Australia is even more distinct in its physical specialties than in its variety of race.
Looking then to the unwonted persistency of the Peruvian cranium within such narrow limits, so far at least as the physical characteristics of the predominant population of Peru are illustrated by means of the great Coast cemeteries; and to the striking discrepancy between the volume of brain and the intellectual activity of the race; I am led to the conclusion that, in the remarkable exceptional characteristics thus established by the study of this class of Peruvian crania, we have as marked an indication of a distinctive race-character as anything hitherto noted in anthropology.
|
[152]
|
The Descent of Man, Part I. chap. iv.
|
|
[153]
|
Insanity and its Treatment, by G. F. Blandford, M.D., p. 10.
|
|
[154]
|
Mr. Darwin’s Critics: Critiques and Addresses.
|
|
[155]
|
Vogt, Lectures on Man, Lecture III.
|
|
[156]
|
Journal of Mental Science, vol. xii. p. 23.
|