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entitled to talk against it, but not till then. Even as to the smaller organ there is one-fourth of an inch of difference betwixt the development of the organ of colouring in the head of Mr James Milne, who cannot distinguish shades of colour, and in the heads of Mr Douglas and Mr Gibson, who are professional painters. Masks of the three lie on the Society's table, and you may ascertain the fact by examination. I could cite many other instances.

Phil. But this practice of poking at heads is absurd and ridiculous, and no gentleman can practise it without being laughed at as a fool.

Phren. They who sit enthroned in antiquated and erroneous opinions find it easier to laugh at methods which threaten to hurl them from their high estate, than to offer a valid objection to them by argument. They have been successful in maintaining the laugh for a time, because the real state of the matter in dispute was not generally known. As soon as this is the case, the tables will be turned. An individual is never truly absurd in seeking important knowledge in the only way in which it is to be found, and when the phrenologists have demonstrated, first, The utter ignorance of their opponents; and, secondly, The adequacy of their own method of investigation to arrive at truth,-the ridicule will attach altogether to the other side. The opponents must stoop to be schooled by those whom they affect to despise, or act upon the maxim,

"Ne voyons goutte, cherissons l'erreur."

Phil. But you deceive yourselves; your imaginations are heated, and you see facts just because you wish to see them. Phren. Then it is your duty to observe better, and contradict us. You are not entitled to assume our incapacity to observe, without a shadow of evidence of the real existence of this incapacity. We court inquiry; we exhibit our casts; put callipers, with a graduated scale, into your hands, and request you to examine, and measure, and refute us, if you Besides, it is a truly ludicrous manifestation of one o

can.

our demonstrated organs, self-esteem, for an opponent to assume that he himself, without one moment's attention to the subject, is a better judge of the real nature and merits of phrenology than other individuals who have devoted much time and labour to its investigation. Such a piece of conceit might have passed without severe animadversion while the phrenologists were few in number and obscure; but when societies are formed in various places for its cultivation, professing it to be a well-founded, experimental science, and when full courses of lectures on it are delivered and attended, day after day, with patient attention by gentlemen arrived at maturity of judgment and of acknowledged talents and reputation, such a system of contemptuous condemnation exposes him who uses it to just ridicule.

Phil. It may be so; but I have too much to engage my attention at present to listen to such animadversions. Good morning!

ARTICLE VII.

ALLEGED CLAIM OF REIL TO DR GALL'S DISCOVERIES IN THE ANATOMY OF THE BRAIN.

In a future number of this Journal, it is our intention to treat of the anatomy of the brain, and to point out as clearly as possible the advantages of the mode of dissection adopted by Drs Gall and Spurzheim, as compared with those generally in use. On the continent, ample justice is now done to the anatomical labours of these two gentlemen, and it is much to the credit of our present professor Monro, that so early as 1813, when the prejudice against them was very strong, he should have been the first to admit and to give them praise for the improvements which they had made in the anatomy of the nervous system. In this country, their anatomical

• Outlines of Anatomy, vol. III. p. 135.

merit is still far from being generally acknowledged, and it has been much the fashion to affirm that they had borrowed largely, without acknowledgment, from Reil, the celebrated German anatomist. This charge was first made by Dr Gordon, and although triumphantly refuted by Dr S., in a pamphlet published in 1817, is still frequently brought forward by those who look to one side only of a question. All that we mean to do at present is to refute the charge, from the authority of Reil himself,-who would have been astonished at such a charge, if he had read it.

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In the 4th volume of Dr Gall's large work, "Sur l'Ana"tomie et la Physiologie du Cerveau, et du Systeme Ner"veaux," at p. 378, is an extract from a publication by Professor Bischoff, who was acquainted with Reil and Loder, both of Halle, and both eminent as anatomists, and before all of whom Drs G. and S. dissected several brains. "Le digne Reil," says Bischoff, "qui comme anatomiste profond et physiologiste judicieux, n'a pas besoin de mes éloges, a declaré en s'élèvant au dessus de toutes les peti"tesses de l'égoisme qu'il avait plus trouvé dans les dis“sections du cerveau faites par Gall, qu'il n' aŭrait cru ""qu'un homme put jamais y decouvrir de toute sa vie.' "Loder, (continues Bischoff,) qui ne le cede sans contredit à "aucun des anatomistes vivans a jugé les decouvertes de Gall "de la maniere suivante." After giving a favourable opinion of the physiological and anatomical discoveries, Loder says, "Je suis honteux et indigné contre moimeme, d'avoir com❝me les autres depuis près de trente ans, decoupé des cen❝taines de cerveaux comme on tranchê dans un fromage et "de n'avoir pas aperçu la forêt par le trop d'arbres qu'il y "avait. Mais a quoi bon se facher et rougir? Le meilleur "parti est de preter l'oreille à la verité et d'apprendre ce que "l'on ne sait pas. Je dis comme Reil que j'ai trouvé plus "que je ne croyais qu' un homme put faire dans le cours de

"sa vie."

ARTICLE VIII.

THE SPIDER AND THE BEE.

To the Editor of the Phrenological Journal.

SIR,-I am a phrenologist, and as I do not, like some halfconverts to the system, coquet with my belief in it, but, on the contrary, openly avow it wherever I go, I am of course prepared to encounter all that kind of civil persecution, with which the followers of Drs Gall and Spurzheim have been visited by the patrons of the old philosophy. This, however, makes no sort of impression on me; on the contrary, I am frequently amused, when, at the first mention of the subject in a company, I perceive a sneer beginning to mantle on the face of some grave professor, or pert young advocate.-Burns has somewhere asked, "where is the shield from the darts "of contempt ?" I could have told him, that one effectual shield is afforded by the conviction, that the contempt is founded in ignorance. The savage views with supreme contempt the arts and the improvements of civilized life ;—but what civilized man cares for the contempt of a savage? Now the grave professors, and advocates learned in the law, however knowing they may be in matters within their own sphere, are perfect Yahoos when they begin to talk about phrenology, of which we have generally found they know as little as the Canadian or Esquimaux does about the solar system.

I happened to dine the other day with a party of literary men, among whom the subject was started, as it sometimes is, for the sole purpose of running it down. I soon found that so far as votes went I was rather in the minority, as indeed I was the only decided phrenologist in the room. Some there were who, I knew, had wavered, but these being deterred by the dread laugh of a redoubted doctor, drew their forces aside, and left me to wage the combat alone. The contest which followed somewhat resembled what I have seen take

place between the small fry of a school and some unfortunate dominie, who has happened to incur their displeasure. Whenever the dominie turns and faces the enemy, they scamper off in all directions,-so that he never can get a blow at any of them; but no sooner has he turned his back than they are down upon him in scores, while at the same time he is assaulted from a distance with showers of light missiles, more irritating to the temper than weapons of a heavier construction. I attempted several times to fix them down to fair argument, but this I found was in vain. When, as I thought, I had aimed a blow that was to fell one of them to the earth, he shifted his ground, or one of his friends took his place, and bestrode the fallen, spreading over him as a shield a stray leaf of Blackwood's Magazine; or, if nothing else would do, sometimes my most conclusive hits were parried by a pun, or a conundrum. However, I was determined not to yield one inch of ground, and continued to the end to show a bold front to the enemy.

Being rather tired by this unprofitable sort of wrangling, on reaching home I took up a book to compose my mind with something intelligible, after the nonsense I had been listening to, and I lighted upon that volume of Swift which contains his account of the battle of the books in St James's library. I there read, with great satisfaction, the following apologue :-Upon the highest corner of a large window, there dwelt a certain Spider, swoln up to the first magnitude by the destruction of infinite numbers of flies, whose spoils lay scattered before the gates of his palace, like human bones before the cave of some giant. The avenues to his castle were guarded with turnpikes and palisadoes.—In this mansion he had, for some time, dwelt in peace and plenty, without danger to his person, by swallows from above, or to his palace, by brooms from below: when it was the pleasure of fortune to conduct thither a wandering Bee, to whose curiosity a broken pane in the glass had discovered itself, and in he went; where, expatiating a while, he at last happened to alight upon one of the outward walls of the Spider's cita

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