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CONCLUSION.

WHOEVER Would recognize the truth of physiognomy, and the profound wisdom of nature, in the formation of animals; and would wish, from experience, to be convinced she acts according to known laws, let him compare the profiles of all animals, and remark,

a The proportion of the mouth to the whole head,

b Of the eye to the mouth,

c And the proportion according to the middle line of the mouth,

d According to the form and obliquity, or curving of the mouth;

e The angle which this line generally considered forms with the mouth.

In man, for example, the eye, seen in profile, stands about six times as high above the mouth as the profile line of the mouth is broad.

This is nearly a right angle in the wisest and best of men. When most remote from a right angle, and so obtuse as to appear nearly a right line, brutality of the grossest kind is there manifest; as it also is when the proportion between the profile line of the mouth and an imaginary line, drawn from the mouth to the eye, is most distant from human proportion; which when true is as

one to six.

X.

ON SCULLS.

How much may the anatomist see in the mere scull of man! How much more the physiognomist! And how much the most the anatomist who is a physiognomist!

I blush when I think how much I ought to know, and of how much I am ignorant, while writing on a part of the body of man which is so superior to all that science has yet discovered; to all belief, to all concep

tion.

It must have been already remarked that I take the system of the bones as the great outline of man, the scull as the principal part of that system, and that I consider what is added almost as the colouring of this drawing; that I pay more attention to the form and arching of the scull, as far as I am acquainted with it, than all my predecessors; and that I have considered this most firm, least changeable, and far best defined part of the human body as the foundation of the science of physiognomy.

I shall therefore be permitted to enlarge further on this member of the human body.

I confess I scarcely know where to begin, where to end; what to say, or what to omit.

I think it advisable to premise a few words concerning the generation and formation of human bones.

The whole of the human foetus is at first supposed to be only a soft mucilaginous substance, homogeneous in all its parts, and that the bones themselves are but a kind of coagulated fluid which, afterward, becomes membraneous, then cartilaginous, and, at last, hard bone.

As this viscous congelation, originally so transparent and tender, increases, it becomes thicker, and more opaque, and a dark point makes its appearance different from the cartilage, and of the nature of bone, but not yet perfectly hard. This point may be

called the kernel of the future bone; the centre, round which the ossification extended.

We must, however, consider the coagulation attached to the cartilage as a mass without shape, and only with a proper propensity for assuming its future form. In its earliest, tenderest state, the traces of it are expressed upon the cartilage though very imperfectly.

With respect to the bony kernels, we find

differences which seem to determine the forms of the future bones. The simple and smaller bones have each only one kernel, but, in the more gross, thick, and angular, there are several, in different parts of the ori ginal cartilage, and it must be remarked that the number of the joining bones is equivalent to the number of the kernels.

In the bones of the scull, the round kernel first is apparent, in the centre of each piece; and the ossification extends itself, like radii from the centre, in filaments, which increase in length, thickness, and solidity; and are interwoven with each other, like net-work. Hence these delicate, indented futures of the skull, when its various parts are, at length, joined.

We have hitherto only spoken of the first stage of ossification. The second begins about the fourth or fifth month, when the bones, together with the rest of the parts, are more perfectly formed, and, in the progress of ossification, include the whole cartilage, according to the more or less life of the creature, and the original different impulse and power of motion, in the being.

Agreeable to their original formation, through each succeeding period of age, they will continue to increase in thickness and hardness.

But on this subject anatomists disagree. -So let them: future physiognomists may consider this more at large. I retreat from contest, and will travel in the high road of certainty, and confine myself to what is visible.

Thus much is certain, that the activity of the muscles, vessels, and other parts which surround the bones, contribute much to their formation, and gradual increase in hardness.

The remains of the cartilaginous, in the young bones, will, in the sixth and seventh month, decrease in quantity, harden, and whiten, as the bony parts approach perfection. Some bones obtain a certain degree of firmness in much less time than others; as, for example, the scull-bones, and the small bones within the ear. Not only whole bones, but parts of a single bone, are of various degrees of hardness. They will be hardest at the place where the kernel of ossification began, and the parts adjacent, and the rigidity increases more slowly and insensibly the harder the bones are, and the older the man is. What was cartilage will become bone: parts that were separate will grow together, and the whole bones be deprived of moisture.

Anatomists divide the form into the natu