that he knows the part removed so well as to be able to point out the corresponding portion of the brain in another animal of the same species.. Having done this, he closely watches the actions of the animal operated upon, in hopes to miss some customary manifestation, but certainly not under any idea that the destroyed part of the brain will reveal its function; on the contrary, he expects some previously known functional manifestation to be no longer perceptible. He would then probably infer that the lost function depended upon that part of the brain which he had destroyed. Substituting nerves for brain, this was precisely the proceeding of Sir Charles Bell, when he demonstrated the distinctness of the nerves of sensation and motion, by experiments on living animals. Now, assuming the analogy betwixt a mechanical instrument and a living animal to be unobjectionable, and that what was true of the one would be also true of the other, we ought to suppose the destroyer of the strings to be a musician who had frequently heard the instrument played, but who did not yet know whether he had heard the sounds of every string. In breaking a particular string, he might happen to break one that he had never heard sounding, and in this case he might no doubt hear over again all the tunes he had heard from the instrument, without ascertaining the sound of the broken string. But if (as would be greatly more probable in a fracture of a familiar instrument) he chanced to break a string whose sound he had frequently heard, he would certainly miss that sound when he had set the instrument to play; and knowing which of the strings he had broken, he would correctly conclude that the lost sound had proceeded formerly from that particular string.

Rightly stated, the analogy would thus seem to tell in favour of the vivisector; that is, if we allow a comparison betwixt the instrument and the animal. Nevertheless, the rule or principle designed to be conveyed by Mr. Combe, is correct, though illustrated by a false analogy. The peculiarity in the structure of the brain, which makes the rule a right one, is precisely that which makes the analogy a false one. In a musical instrument, each string is introduced in order that it may emit a definite sound, when thrown into vibration; the strings are distinct and independent one from another, and may be separately destroyed; and any one may continue to emit its perfect sound after all the rest have been destroyed. In the brain, on the contrary, taking the phrenological view of it, each single organ has various modes of manifestation; the organs cannot be separated, or even distinguished one from another, by the most skilful anatomist; and the destruction of any one of them would affect the functional manifestation of some (if not all) of

the rest. We agree with Mr. Combe's postulate, that mutilations of the brains of animals are unlikely alone to lead to clear views concerning their functions; but we must object to the comparison by which he seeks to give a popular illustration of the insufficiency of vivisection: we object, first, because the case of the vivisectors is not correctly stated, and secondly, because no real analogy can exist between experiments on a mechanically constructed instrument and those on the organised brain of a living animal.

This is a lengthy digression from the Lectures, to quarrel with an incidental illustration; but the faults of Mr. Combe's writings, if trivial in themselves, may become of serious importance when received and re-echoed by the public; and highly as we esteem both the works and their author, we never hesitate to affirm the opinion expressed two or three pages back, that they are by no means faultless. Indeed, we have more than once felt tempted to pass the works of this celebrated writer under close review, and to direct attention to their scattered blemishes, in the hope of seeing them removed. A critical notice of Mr. Combe's works could at present be looked for only in a phrenological journal; and considering the intimate connection of their author with this Journal, until recently, no unbiassed review of them could have been expected even here: hence, possibly, one chief cause of the blemishes remaining unremoved. Another example strikes the eye, on the page opposite to that from which we have quoted the musical-instrument comparison. It is there remarked, " Again, pathological cases have been brought forward to illustrate the functions of the brain; and sometimes to oppose phrenology. Now, before you can draw any conclusion concerning the function of a part from a state of disease, you must know the function of the part in health." Here also we have the fallacy of an incomplete view. It is true, we must know the function, and we must know also the part; but it is not necessary that we should know the function to be the function of that part: it is by attentive observation of disease, concomitant in organ and function, that a pathologist would seek to connect one with the other; and in fact important discoveries have been made or early confirmed in this way. Phrenology itself affords examples; and if Mr. Combe will call to recollection the manner in which Gall was led to the discovery of the functions assigned to the cerebellum, he will have one of the examples. If we thus allude freely to faults, let our coincident assertion be remembered, namely, that the faults are immeasurably exceeded by the excellencies.

There is much in the volume before us, to which we should

gladly call the reader's attention, by making extracts of various suggestions, anecdotes, and sketches of character; but how far it would be deemed proper thus to enrich our own pages, by seizing upon the ornaments of Mr. Combe's Lectures, we are at a loss to determine. For the present we shall arrest the pen, in the full intention of continuing the notice of this work in the succeeding No. But we must first copy two short paragraphs, which will help to impress on the reader's recollection that old-fashioned advice about not judging by outside appearances only.

"In the course of my lectures I have made some observations on your institutions; in this lecture I shall make others. But I must always be understood as speaking of things as they appear to me. I once visited a part of Somersetshire in which the soil is very light, and there saw a man guide a light plough drawn by four large horses. What a waste of strength is here!' I thought. I expressed this opinion to a very intelligent farmer whom I met next day in society. You, sir,' said he, 'judge as strangers naturally do, and think we are very foolish; but it is our business to train horses for the London market, and this is the plan we take to break in the young horses to labour, which increases the price when we come to sell them.'” (Page 353.)

"Phrenology has a great tendency to encourage and give confidence to the good. In my own country, men with a large coronal region, reflective faculties, and Ideality, shrink from the turmoil, bustle, and degradation consequent on becoming a canditate for public office; and those who are most eager after distinction are often found to have little except Self-Esteem and Love-of-Approbation to recommend them, their coronal region being often small. They will send round their emissaries to learn what opinions or measures are popular among the electors, and then come out in their advocacy with all their might. The people are thus pleased, and deceived into the election of an unworthy man. When phrenology shall be well known, the highly moral and intellectual men will find their place, and stand shoulder to shoulder in the great work of human advancement." (Page 373.)

This last paragraph affords also one illustration of a subject, on which a prize essay appeared in the last No. of this Journal, namely, The Application of Phrenology in the Choice of Parliamentary Representatives,' a subject to which we may again return ere long.

II. Phrenology and the Periodicals.

THE pressure of accumulated materials, in the two last Nos. of this Journal, compelled the omission of its customary notices of articles bearing on Phrenology, which had fallen under the editor's observation in the pages of other periodicals; and we are consequently half a year in arrear.

The Analyst, No. 28, has only one article closely connected with the subjects noticed in this Journal, namely, "An Essay on the expediency and means of elevating the profession of the educator in the estimation of the public." Though rather overlaid with words, the article deserves its place in the pages of that varied periodical, on account of its general tone of good sense and good feeling. Nevertheless, we could wish to see writers on such a subject, evincing more knowledge of mental philosophy, and ceasing to employ the misleading (however familiar and customary) expressions about "hardening of the heart," "newness of heart," &c. when referring to the cultivation of the moral faculties. The separation of "moral" and "mental" training into two distinct heads, implies a sad confusion of ideas: full "mental" training necessarily includes "moral" training, seeing that the latter is but a part of the former, and that the moral qualities depend on the brain equally as all other mental qualities. The following paragraph conveys a truth which can scarcely be too much insisted upon: "If the Government will not educate the people, bad circumstances, temptations, and evil companions will educate them, for man cannot merely vegetate; he will learn to do good or evil. In vain is the voice of religion and reason turned to the ear of a people morally deaf, in vain do the humane try to repel the tide of habituated evil; the remedies they propose are suitable, but not adequate in power, and while individuals or parties may swell the list of converts bad and depraved education is moulding and manufacturing a whole generation in the indulgence and practice of every vice. Amid the great bouleversement the rulers and governors of this kingdom are busied in court intrigues and senatorial squabbles, or in their utmost efforts stretch not beyond a municipal corporation bill, or the levying a new impost.' In No. 30 (January last) there is a capital sketch of the progress of Animal Magnetism, which we strongly recommend for perusal by those who have wished the introduction of that subject into the Phrenological Journal.

The Athenæum, No. 607, in a notice of the English reprint of Sewall's Lectures, announces the newly discovered fact, that Phrenology has been left to make its own way in peace and quietness, saving a little hubbub in a corner, quite out of the public way, and merely confined to "a coterie," which phrenologists mistake for the public. This is a curious opinion to be put forth at the present day, by the Editor of a " Journal of English and Foreign Literature, Science, and the Fine Arts," before whose eyes so many new works and so much of the periodical literature of this country at least ought to come. Phrenology may be said to have been first introduced to the reading public of Britain, by a condemnation of it, in the Edinburgh Review, in 1803, and to the medical profession, in 1807, by the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal; and to have been at length more fully offered to the general public, in 1814 and 1815, by the publications and lectures of Spurzheim. Since that date, not a year has elapsed in which Phrenology has not been attacked in some of our periodicals, and often by those of widest circulation and greatest public influence. The subject has also been written upon by many pamphleteers, and in most of the Cyclopædias; and it has been read and spouted against, times innumerable, in Royal and Scientific Societies, in colleges, and before public audiences of all grades of rank, excepting only the highest. Really it must be a curious "coterie" which includes together the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews -the Monthly Magazine and Medical Gazette-Blackwood's and Tait's Magazines- The Athenæum and the Literary Gazette-The Times and Morning Herald - The Encyclopædia Britannica and Rees's Cyclopædia, &c. &c. besides a whole host of individual writers as far asunder as it is well possible to be, in station, acquirements, abode, profession, religious tenets, and other circumstances. We suspect that the "coterie" of the Athenæum may mistake itself for the "public," and thus be self-deceived into supposing the rest of the public to be a coterie.

The British and Foreign Medical Review, No. 16, has a eritical analysis of the contents of a small work recently published by Tiedemann, on the European, Negro, and Ourang brain. It is an amplification of his paper on the same subject, printed in the Philosophical Transactions, and to which sufficient allusion has been already made in the Phrenological Journal. Tiedemann says, that the brain of the ourang is smaller absolutely, smaller relatively to the body, smaller relatively to the nerves, has smaller cerebral hemispheres relatively to the spinal cord, medulla oblongata, cerebellum, and corpora qua