Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-08-04
NERVOUS SYSTEM
OF SPIDER

ceiving legacies OF brains from various
classes of society. He will show you the
brain of noted mathematician. critic and
philosopher and tell you that it is noted
for the great width of It's convolutions and
great simplicity of its assures. When you
ask him If these characteristics are the
haii-rnarks of intellectual superiority he
shrugs his shoulders and points to two
other jars containing the only brains with
these characteristics. One, he tells you is
the understood thinking organ of an I'M
known mulatto. The other is the brain
of Ruloff, the murderer.
Another collection of preserved brains is
that of the National Museum, its installa-
ton having been lately begun by DR.. Ales
zeal anthropology. This investigator has
devised apparatus for measuring the brain
capacities of the thousands of human skulls
lately acquired by the museum. The skulls
are first carefully filled with mustard seeds
pa cked solidly In their brain cavities. At
terward the seeds are poured into a grad
tated glass tube which gives their volume
and hence that of the brain which pre-
viously fit in the same space The grea ter
part of this research is a comparison of
the brains of the different tribes of Amer
lean Indians.
Quest of the Seat of Intellect.
But the seat of intelligence has not yet
been found by any of these scientists.
Sritzka, the noted student of the BRAIN
comes nearest to satisfying his fellow stu
dents with his theory that intellect may be
determined by the condition of certain
connecting fibers of the brain. For years
the prevailing notion has been that the
deeper the convolutions of a brain are the
moro intellect the possessor has to his cred.
1t. A psychologist with whom once dis
cUssed the matter opined that intellectual
superiority was principally matter of hay
Ing d plethora of cells in the eortex or
layer of gray matter covering the brain.
haar1 h1f hrafr
weight is an Index to intelligence. The
average brain weight of an adult man is
49h ounces The largest human brain on
record was that of the novelist Tourgenieff,
Weighing TAN ounces. Other brains weigh
ing above the average were those of Cuyier,
85& ounces; Byron, 63 40 ounces; Schiller,
55 As ounces; Gauss 52.7 ounces, and
Dante, SOP ounces But that a heavy
brain is not always an accompaniment of
superior intellect is proved by the case of
Gambetta, whose brain weighed only 41ia
ounces-eight ounces under the male hui
man average. Tfedemann and other great
men have had brains weighing below the
average. The average idiots brain weighs
only q ounces-less than half that of the
average normal man.
Brain Weight and Occupation.
Brains of 11T3 persons have been re-
moved Immediately after death and investi-
gated by Marchand. a French anatom:st,
He finds that brain weight is altered by
disease. Diphtherla, for example, increases
1t. N. Mathiega. an anthropologst of
Prague, after removing the brains of 235
persons, has weighed them and drawn an
average weight for each class of occupa-
ton. The highest average is for day la
borers, and next In ascending order OF
average brain weight comes day laborers,
workmen and unskilled laborers, porters,
guardians and watchers, mechanics, busi-
ness men and photographers assistants,
and. heaviest of all, physicians and pro-
fessors. The average weight of 100 brains
of intelligent persons would probably al
ways be found greater than that of an
equal number of unintelligent individuals.
Heavy brains generally accompany high
intelligence when nations, races, classes or
species are compared. Yet, as We have
seen, weight of brain cannot be relied upon
as In index of mental caracity in indivfd-
uals. Some of the heaviest brains discov-