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ARTICLE V.

DR GALL ON THE ORGAN AND FACULTY OF LOCALITY.

Sens des Localités, Sens des Rapports de l'Espace, (Ortsinn, Raumsinn.)

THE taste which I had for natural history says Dr Gall, (in the 4th volume of his work, Sur les Fonctions du Cerveau), induced me to go very often to the woods to catch birds and to seek out their nests. I was very successful in the latter object, because I had often observed towards which of the cardinal points each species of birds was in the custom of building its nest. I succeeded equally well in laying out my nets in the proper places, because I had acquired the habit of divining the canton or ground of the bird by its cries and by its movements; but, when I wished to go in search of the birds which were caught, or to take possession of a nest ten or fifteen days afterwards, it was generally impossible for me to find either the tree I had marked, or the nets which I had set; and yet, after having set them, I purposely approached them by different roads branching in different directions, before finally leaving them, and stuck branches in the earth, and made incisions on the trees, to guide me,-but all in vain. I was therefore forced to take one of my schoolfellows, who, without the least effort of attention, went always straight to the place where the net was lying, although we had often ten or fifteen set at one time in a country not at all familiar to him. As this youth had very moderate abilities in other respects, I was the more struck with the facility with which he extricated himself. I often asked him how he contrived to guide himself so accurately? to which he answered, by asking how I contrived to lose myself everywhere?

In the hope of one day throwing some light on the matter, I took a cast of his head, and set about finding out persons

distinguished for the same power. The great landscapepainter, Schoenberger, told me, that in his travels he usually made only a very imperfect sketch of the countries that interested him, and that afterwards, when he began to convert his sketch into a regular landscape, every tree, every shrub, and every stone of any magnitude presented themselves to his imagination in their natural order. I took a cast of his head, and placed it beside that of my schoolfellow Scheidler. At this time I became acquainted with M. Meyer, author of the romance of Dia-na-sore, who is happy only when wandering. Sometimes he goes from one country house to another; at other times he attaches himself to some rich man going on his travels; and he also has an astonishing facility of recollecting the different places which he has seen. I made a cast of his head, and placed the copy beside the other two. I then compared the three with great attention; they offered remarkable differences in many points, but I was struck with the singular form which the region immediately over the eyes and at each side of the organ of Individuality presented in all of them. Here two great prominences commencing at the root of the nose, and rising obliquely outwards towards the middle of the forehead, were very conspicuous.

It was then that the idea involuntarily occurred to me, that the power of recollecting places might also depend on a fundamental faculty, the organ of which might be situated in the part of the head alluded to. Granting this to be true, every thing that is said about local memory becomes explicable. This then furnished abundant matter for new reflections.

But, before proceeding, I must remove a difficulty which will often present itself to those of my readers who are unacquainted with anatomy. In some human heads, and especially in some heads of men, the external table of the bone is separated from the internal immediately above and on each side of the root of the nose; and, as in these cases the external lamina projects externally and not internally, as in the age of

decrepitude, two very sensible prominences thence arise. And the opponents of Phrenology maintain that it is these two prominences which I mistake for the external indication of Locality. I had formed the answer to that objection long before it was made to me. My adversaries, or anatomists in general, are wrong in admitting that frontal sinuses exist in every individual. In women they are rarely found; they are often wanting also in men up to an advanced age, when the internal table falls in, but without causing any external prominence. It is true that these apparent ridges formed by the frontal sinuses are at the place where the external mark of the organ of Locality begins; but then they are placed in an almost horizontal direction, in general immediately be tween the eyebrows, and sometimes extend to the two sides as far as the middle of the superciliary ridge. The prominences arising from a large organ of Locality are, on the contrary, more uniformly rounded, without inequalities, and extend to the middle of the forehead, following an oblique line from below, upwards and outwards.

To guard against confounding the development of the or gans of Locality in the lower animals with the prominences produced by the frontal sinuses, it is necessary to study very minutely the structure of the head in the different species. In some, all the adults have large sinuses, as in the bull, the buffalo, the elephant, the bear, and the sow. In others, as in man, the sinus exist in some individuals and riot in others. Some varieties of the dog, and often individuals of that very variety, seem to have large frontal sinuses, when anatomy demonstrates that they have none, and that in them the brain is placed immediately behind very thin cranial bones., 7.,

The first idea being once obtained, continues Dr Gall, we immediately find ourselves in possession of riches, the existence of which we never before suspected. Long before I made these observations, I had two dogs, the one of which, little as he was, often left home to make excursions, and never failed to return. The other lost himself whenever he turned his eyes from me in the street, and I could never find

him again, except by sending through the public crier and advertising him. I had afterwards a little dog that could never learn on what floor of the house I lodged. Sometimes in going out with me, she lost sight of me, stood still, and did not advance a step, and all that I had to do to find her was to retrace my steps. I saw one day a little bitch eating greedily on a mass of filth. At that time she could be only four months old at the most, as she had still all her first ⚫ teeth. It appeared that the way I looked at her had inspired her with confidence, for she followed me without my being able to send her away. I took her with me to the house of a lady, who the next day lost her outside of the barriers of Paris. That and the next day it rained heavily without intermission; the third day the little animal returned to the lady, whose house was in the very centre of Paris, in a little out-of-the-way street. Although it was warmly attached to its mistress, it ran about all day in all parts of the city, even when it had young ones, but it never failed to reappear at the hours of eating. One day it was lost thirty miles from Paris, and yet it returned to the house before its mistress. A dog was transported from Vienna to Petersburgh in a carriage, and at the end of six months returned to Vienna. Another was brought from Vienna to London. He there attached himself to a traveller, embarked with him, and, as soon as he gained the shore, escaped, and returned to Vienna. Another dog was sent from Lyons to Marseilles, and there embarked for Naples, whence it returned by land. The gamekeeper in my own district sold a pointer to another sportsman, who carried him 300 leagues off, to the remotest part of Hungary. In a short time a letter arrived, stating that he had run away; and some months after he arrived at his old master's, extenuated with fatigue. There are none of my readers who are not acquainted with similar facts; but how are they to be explained?

Recourse is generally had to the exquisite smell of the dog. But sometimes dogs that return in this way have very

VOL. IV. No XVI.

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obtuse smell; and, besides, how can a dog discover, by means of its nose, traces of a journey made either in a carriage or by water, some months after having made it? Will not the wind, the rain, and the sun, destroy all the emanations? Who will be bold enough to maintain that the dog can discern the atmosphere of its master at the end of a radius of some hundred leagues? Moreover, it is an ascertained fact, that in these cases the dog does not go straight to its first domicile; that it goes, on the contrary, by many windings, and often by a road different from that which it formerly followed. These circumstances seem to some naturalists inexplicable by smell, and they have consequently resorted to a supposed sixth sense.

It is indeed impossible to explain these phenomena by the aid of the sense of smell. Nobody ascribes to pigeons a strong sense of smell, and yet everybody knows, that, if carried away in a sack to great distances, and to 'countries absolutely unknown to them, and there let loose, they immediately return to the pigeon-house by the shortest road. Messrs Van Heynsbergen and Van Breda communicated to me the following fact:-" Two pigeons, male and female, of the "species called pirouetteurs, whose flight is very rapid, were "sent from Vlaardinge (a Dutch town on the banks of the "Meuse) to Iceland.

"The vessel was scarcely arrived at its destination when the "male escaped, and rose to such a height that the eye could scarcely follow him. The captain of the vessel, fearing that ❝he would not return, let go the female, in the hope that she might attract and bring back the male; but she, after some "flights among the rigging, rose and went to join the male. "After their reunion, they amused themselves for some time in "skimming through the air, and at last directed their flight "towards Holland with as much precision as the captain him"self could have done by consulting the compass. From com"paring the date of the log-book, it appeared that the birds "arrived at Vlaardinge on the third day, and were then seen on "the house-top from which they had been taken. They were "so fatigued and exhausted, that they fell from the roof into the court, after having been long called in vain by their "master, who gave them food; and that they did not go out for a week."