SKULLS AND BRAINS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 43, 20 February 1929, Page 6

SKULLS AND BRAINS.

A belief in '"bumps"' is .-o widespread that it is just as well for us to be reminded now and again how little scientific warrant there is for it. Dr. A. A. Mum ford, who. as medical officer to the Manchester Grammar School, has a very large number of measurements to go on within his own experience, observed recently that innii'uerable observations had been carried out on the skull and face, but beyond the fact that a considerable increase in the size of skull was generally related to high mental endowment, little had been discovered. Even size is no infallible guide; Byron, for instance, had an exceptionally la rue brain volume, but Dante, a distinctly small one. It would be a great convenience, in >ome ways, if this were not so, and if we could gauge in advance our own capacities, or our children's, by simply making skull measurements. It is as well to know that "phrenology" in this sense, however fascinating, is still uncountenanced by science, in whose eyes its present standing is scarcely more serious or more reputable than that of palmistry. This non-correspondence between outer and inner is not so contrary to first impressions as the frequent assumptions of novelists might suggest. A common case is that of children, who may very often be observed to inherit their skulls and faces from one parent, but their minds and characters mainly from another of different features. —H.R.