Cranial Casts

Abstract

IN the number of NATURE which arrived here to-day there is a report of the interesting presidential address delivered by Prof. Symington in Section H at the British Association's recent meeting. In this report there are several statements which are likely to prove misleading to those who are not familiar with the literature relating to brain-casts. The reader might imagine (see p. 540) that this was an entirely new branch of research suggested by Dr. Forsyth Major's work on the subfossil Lemuroids (1898) and only fully exploited by Prof. Schwalbe in 1902. This, of course, cannot be the meaning which Prof. Symington intended to convey, because he is quite familiar with the scores of cranial casts made in such profusion by Prof. Gervais in the years 1867-1871, and by a long line of anatomists and palæontologists both before and since that time, and with the valuable contributions to knowledge which have resulted from this fertile branch of study; in fact, Prof. Symington happened to visit the work-room in the Royal College of Surgeons in 1901 when I was examining and describing the considerable collection of such casts (representing more than one hundred genera) which have been brought together by the late Sir William Flower and the present conservator, Prof. C. Stewart. (And, with reference to Prof. Symington's remarks on curators, I may mention that no one more fully recognises the value of cranial casts than the present conservator of the Royal College of Surgeons' Museum.)