except in a few inconsiderable points, this is uniform throughout the skull. Here again, while I refer to the works of Gall, Tiedeman, John Bell and other distinguished anatomists for concurring testimony, as to the thickness of crania, I appeal to an examination of skulls themselves, as the only infallible test of the truth of my statement. And to such test I confidently trust it. As a general rule, the difference in the thickness of the crania of different adult individuals does not I repeat vary more than from half a line to a line from this standard, or from one another, and rarely so much. The crania of children are thinner, while, as already mentioned, those of persons advanced in life, are usually somewhat thicker and harder. Such are

the facts which nature, when the part is in a healthy condition, steadily presents. Let them be contrasted with the counterfeit facts presented by Dr. Sewall. And if that gentleman can witness the contrast without shame and confusion, to say nothing of the neverdying worm of remorse, I envy him neither his conscience, nor his regard for the approbation and esteem of the votaries of honour,

and the lovers of truth.

His pamphlet contains seven engravings or lithographs of skulls, running from plate II. to plate VIII. inclusive. These, with a studied and cool duplicity, which might be well called detestable, he has palmed on the public, as a fair specimen of the average character of the human cranium, in respect to positive and relative thickness, and to the dimensions of the frontal sinus. Yet I venture to say that another group of seven such skulls, he has never seen. Nor can he collect such another

perhaps in seven years' research. I am not myself entirely unacquainted with human crania. For twenty years past I have been in the habit of examining carefully all I could have access to, as well in anatomical museums as elsewhere. And nothing even approaching in character Dr. Sewall's seven conspirators have I been able to find. I bestow on them that ominous and odious name; because, by the agency of their employer, they are made to conspire against truth and science, conscience and every other praiseworthy feeling. Dr. Sewall has collected and used them, on the principle of suborning and bribing witnesses, or packing juries that he may derive from them false testimony, and an unrighteous decision. And he has succeeded. His seven plates are so many conscienceless stratagems to delude. There is not among them the representation of a single natural average skull. In point of thickness, plate VIII. comes nearest the truth. But even in that the thickness is not correct, and the frontal sinus is vastly too large. It is on account of its deceptiveness in the latter respect, that Dr. Sewall has had that cranium delineated. He wishes to impose on his readers the groundless belief that sinuses so spacious frequently occur; whereas it is doubtful whether they occur in one skull out of every ten millions; and in healthy skulls they probably never occur, because they are unnatural. I have seen them a few times in the skulls of idiots, which are always irregular in some way, on account of the irregular development of their brains. speak more definitely on this point.

To

The reader is requested to bear in mind, that, as here

-tofore stated, the average thickness of the human skull is about the fifth (two-tenths) of an inch, and to compare this with the following admeasurements:

The thickness of the skull, represented in plate II. is about the eighth of an inch; that in plate III. a little more than three tenths of an inch; plate IV. about five tenths; plate V. six tenths; VI. eight tenths; VII. a full inch or more; VIII. thickness nearly natural, but frontal sinuses enormous.

From this representation, brief as it is, the studied and reprehensible effort of Professor Sewall to deceive must be obvious to every one, His professed object is to give, in a series of plates, a fair and natural delineation of the average character of the human skull. And to effect this, he has had executed drawings of seven skulls, each of them in some way deformed and unnatural; and most of them bearing indubitable marks of disease. The cranium represented in plate VII. belonged to the cabinet of Spurzheim. I saw and examined it both in Paris and Boston. It is, if I remem

But whether cor

ber correctly, the skull of a maniac. rect in this or not, I am perfectly so in stating, that, in his lectures, Spurzheim exhibited it as a diseased skull. And as such, it must appear to every one acquainted with anatomy - Dr. Sewall not excepted. That gentleman informs us, that he procured from Professor Smith, of Baltimore, the skulls delineated in plates IV. V. and VI. And I doubt not that Professor Smith keeps them in his cabinet, as specimens certainly of unnatural, and probably of diseased crania. The bones themselves may not be diseased. But they are preternaturally thickened, in consequence of derangement in

the viscus they enclosed. Such occurrences are frequent in cases of long continued madness and other chronic cerebral affections. The brain diminishes in

size and the skull thickens; changes which had evidently taken place in the brains and crania represented by Dr. Sewall, in plates IV. V. VI. and VII. The brains had been reduced in size by some morbid affection. In consequence of this, the internal table of the cranium had retreated from the external, to prevent the production of a vacuum, and a greater amount of diploe having been interposed, the whole had grown thicker. In the fashionable language of the day, a larger amount of blood flowing to the bones of the crania, they had become hypertrophied. I have several specimens of. such changes in the skulls of maniacs. Even Dr. Sewall himself has not the hardihood to proclaim his plates a fair representation of the average character of the human cranium. No; when interrogated on the subject by his class, instead of a manly avowal or disavowal, he plays the jesuit, and equivocates in his reply. The following are his own words on the subject:

"You have asked, gentlemen, if the specimens of crania delineated in the plates, were not extreme cases; of irregular structure, and to be regarded as exceptions to the general rule? I have already stated, that I possess skulls of every intermediate degree of thickness, from that of the Waterman (plate II. one eighth of an inch thick) to the cast of Spurzheim; and those, also, which exhibit the frontal sinuses from the size represented in plate VIII. to those which are scarcely perceptible; and, by visiting the anatomical cabinets of our

country, the same variations will be seen in abundance." ―pp. 52, 53.

The first part of this extract, I repeat, is an equivoque

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Pro

a jesuitical reply · -"a non-committal," practised indeed by the timid and wiley politician; but which the man of science should throw from him, as a stigma alike on his character and calling. Yet it may be true. fessor Sewall may have the varieties of crania which he says he has. But if so, they are not an accidental possession. They are not, I mean, the product of promiscuous acquisition. They have been procured by the research and selection of years. And Dr. Sewall has not hazarded, I say, nor will he hazard the groundless assertion, that they are a correct representation of the average character of human crania in a natural condition. Like the poet's witches, actuated by a spirit of moral cowardice or duplicity, he has "paltered about the matter in a double sense ;" an act as inconsistent with manliness, as with truth and conscience. Bold, open deception is less despicable than that which is covert and dastardly; on the same ground that mid-day robbery is less contemptible than mid-night theft. He whose timidity permits him to sin only by halves, if not the most atrocious, is the most despised of sinners.

The assertion made in the italicised clause of the extract is also unfounded. Such irregularities of crania are not to be "seen in abundance," in the "anatomical cabinets of our country." And if they even were, the testimony borne by the fact, would avail Dr. Sewall but little. Cabinets are made up too much of rarities of things curious more than of things useful. Hence a cranium remarkable for thickness, thinness, or