Heads and Hats.

Te Aroha News, Volume VIII, Issue 487, 9 July 1890, Page 3

Heads and Hats.

The recent correspotidence upon this subject in tho ‘St. James Gazette 5 has suggested to the ‘British Medical Journal’ a disquisition upon the scientific aspects of the matter.

The Skull and Intellectual Development.

After many investigations, says the ‘Journal,’ M. Le Bon came to the conclusion that tho volume of the head eannot be inferred from its circumference or diameter in individual cases, aud that only when a series or group of crania is dealt with can approximately accurate results bo got from those measurements. The statistics as to the size of the head supplied by hatters, while very valuable when based upon a large number of records, are subject to many errors, since the size of the hat worn will depend on the condition of the body. Again, tho length and thickness of tho hair notably affect the size of hat worn at different times by the same individual. The age of tho person has also to bo reckoned with. When young the hat is worn, as a rule, higher up on the head than at a later period of life, when it is pressed down to form a better covering, and thus requires to bo larger, tho circumference of the head being greater near the brow and occiput than higher up. To this cause, for the most part, may be attributed the not infrequent observation of elderly persons in good condition of body regarding the apparent growth of the size of their heads as judged from the size of hat worn at different periods.

The Men Who Have the Largest Heads.

From the study of the brains of men of superior intellect, it has been shown by the Wagners and others that the convoluted surface is frequently much more tortuous, and that the superficial area of the convolutions is considerably greater than in the average European brain ; but men of undoubted intellectual ability have been found to possess brains in which the convolutions had no unusually complex arrangement, so that tho depths of the sulci, tho thickness of the grey matter, and the quality of the tissue of which the convolutions are composed have also to be taken into account. Presumably the grey matter is the most active part of the brain in relation to intellect, and the grey matter which contains the greatest proportion of nerve cells in a given area is tho most efficient. Investigations have also shown that as a rule the brains of men of superior intellect are the heaviest or largest, though this is by no means constant, since large and heavy brains have been found in idiots. Examination of the cranial capacity, from which a fairly accurate approximation of the size of tho brain may be drawn, has shown that in the civilised European the size of brain is considerably higher than in savage races, not only as an average, but in individual cases, and that the variations in the former races are much greater than in the latter. A series of observations on the size of head of students at Cambridge University recently published are of great interest, and show that the size of head of those who obtain high honours is considerably largerthan thatoftheordinarystudents at the same age, while the remainder of the honours men occupy an intermediate position as regards size of head. M. Le Bon, in a very valuable paper, has been able, by means of examinations of the registers of a hatter, to ascertain the size of the head for hats of a large number of persons in various social positions in France. These he divided into five classes, and found that the relative position occupied by each class with respect to size of the head was as follows, beginning with tho largest 1, men of science and letters ; 2, merchants ; 3, nobles of ancient family ; 4, domestic servants ; 5, peasants. These various and independent observations show that there is a direct relation between the size of tho head and brain on the one hand, and intellectual ability on the other when applied to a number of persons collectively, bub in the present state of our knowledge trustworthy deductions cannot be arrived at with respect to individuals.