and is often interrupted by deep sighs. As Gratiolet remarks, whenever our attention is long concentrated on any subject, we forget to breathe, and then relieve ourselves by a deep inspiration; 1 but the sighs of a sorrowful person, owing to his slow respiration and languid circulation, are eminently characteristic. 2 As the grief of a person in this state occasionally recurs and increases into a paroxysm, spasms affect the respiratory muscles, and he feels as if something, the so-called globus hystericus, was rising in his throat. These spasmodic movements are clearly allied to the sobbing of children, and are remnants of those severer spasms which occur when a person is said to choke from excessive grief. 3 1 [Professor Victor Carus called the attention of the author to a paper by Nasse in Meckel's 'Deutsches Archiv fr Physiologie,' Bd. 2, 1816, p. 1, in which this characteristic form of sighing is described.] 2 The above descriptive remarks are taken in part from my own observations, but chiefly from Gratiolet ('De la Physionomie,' pp. 53, 337; on Sighing, 232), who has well treated this whole subject. See, also, Huschke, 'Mimices et Physiognomices, Fragmentum Physiologicum,' 1821, p. 21. On the dulness of the eyes, Dr. Piderit, 'Mimik und Physiognomik,' 1867, p. 65. 3 On the action of grief on the organs of respiration, see more especially Sir C. Bell, 'Anatomy of Expression,' 3rd edit. 1844, p. 151. [page] 188 Obliquity of the eyebrows. -- Two points alone in the above description