by Paolo Mantegazza, published in the "Archivio per l'Anthropologia," vol. ii, 1872, or to the elaborate critical review thereof by M. A. Dureau, in the journal which I have already mentioned.
Miss Gardener appears to have looked into a copy of Topinard's "Anthropology," and perhaps the "twenty leading brain anatomists," etc., have done likewise, though that is doubtful. In any event, let her and them turn to page 145 of the English edition, and they will find the following words:
"The head of the woman is smaller and lighter, its contours more delicate, the surfaces smoother, the ridges and processes not so marked. The superciliary arches are but little prominent; the external half of the superior orbital border is thin and sharp (Broca). The forehead is vertical below, projecting above. The occipital condyles are small, as also the mastoid and styloid processes. The zygomatic arches are slender. The cranium in its ensemble is less high and longer," etc.
Some of these differences are absolutely inseparable from corresponding differences in the form of the brain.
Then, if they will refer to Carl Vogt's "Lectures on Man," page 90, they will find the differences between the male and female crania, due to civilization and barbarism, stated to the same effect as I have given them—that is, that they are more marked between the sexes in the civilized than in the uncivilized nations.
Now, in regard to the cause of this condition, Miss Gardener says that I "hold it to be a natural and unalterable difference in the brain-mass itself!" How she came to venture upon this assertion is a mystery to me, and I can only attribute it to that defective logical power which appears, for the present at least, to be a characteristic of most female minds. So far from saying anything of the kind, I offered two entirely different explanations of its cause: one to the effect that civilized women had not availed themselves of the advantages offered them, and hence had not developed their brains pari passu with those of men; or else that the work of barbarous men being very similar to that of their women, there had not existed the same necessity for an increased development of their brains.
Then Miss Gardener, without any notice to the reader that she has changed her source of information relative to my views, proceeds to quote from a paper of mine written several years ago, on the subject of "Women in Politics." To be sure, she mentions previously that she intends to quote from two of my papers; but no one reading her letter could believe otherwise than that she was citing extracts from the paper on "Brain-Forcing in Childhood," published in "The Popular Science Monthly" of April last. I have no copy of the other paper before me, it having been published in the "North American Review" several years ago; but doubtless she gives the words correctly, and I state them here with her comments as I find them in her letter:
"Dr. Hammond asserts, again, 'It is only necessary to compare an average male with an average female brain to perceive at once how numerous and striking are the differences existing between them' (the italics are mine). He submits a formidable list of striking differences, which include these: The male brain is larger, its vertical and transverse diameters are greater proportionally, its shape is quite different, the convolutions are more intricate, the sulci deeper, the secondary fissures more numerous, the gray matter of the corresponding parts of the brain decidedly thicker'; of this latter part the doctor modestly says that 'the evidence is not so full as might be desired.' But, as if all these were not quite enough to enable the merest novice to distinguish a male from a female brain, he offers these re-enforcements: 'It is quite certain, as the observations of the writer show, that the specific gravity of both the white and gray substances of the human brain is greater in man than in woman.'"
From this last remark she proceeds to draw the inference (in which doubtless she is sustained by the "twenty leading brain anatomists," etc.) that the greater prevalence of insanity among men than women is the result of the greater specific gravity of the brain, forgetting that the life of man is so much more active than that of woman, his liability to injuries so much greater, his addiction to the excessive use of alcohol so much more common, and his habits generally so much worse, as to constitute the real reasons why he is more liable than woman to become insane.
Moreover, she appears to be entirely ignorant of the facts, as are likewise doubtless the "twenty leading brain-anatomists," etc., that the specific gravity of the brain is increased in insane women as well as in insane men, and that, instead of being a cause, it is probably a consequence of the morbid processes to which the brain of the insane is subjected.
But, in regard to the description which I have given of the average female brain, I stand ready to prove its correctness, not. however, in the rough-and-tumble fashion proposed by Miss Gardener, but by a process by which all such determinations are made by those who know what they are about.
Suppose, for instance, I am describing a woman's thumb, and pointing out its differences from that of a man. I should say that it was shorter, smaller in circumference, that its articulations were not so
