ysiological and psychological importance in respect
to the capacity of development in cases of imperfectly developed brain
are discussed in the "Zeitschrift fuer das Idioten-Wesen" by W. Schroeter
(Dresden) and E. Reichelt (Hubertusburg).

But thus far the methods of microscopical investigation of the brain are
still so little developed that we can not yet with certainty establish a
causal connection, in individual cases, between the deviations of
microcephalic brains from the normal brain and the defects of the
psychical functions. The number of brains of microcephali that have been
examined with reference to this point is very small, although their
scientific value, after thorough-going observation of the possessors of
them during life, is immense. For microcephalous children of some years
of age are a substitute for imaginary, because never practicable,
vivisectory experiments, concerning the connection of body and mind.

To conclude these fragments, let me add here some observations
concerning a case of rare interest, that of the microcephalous child,
Margarethe Becker (born 1869), very well known in Germany. These
observations I recorded on the 9th of July, 1877, in Jena, while the
child was left free to do what she pleased.

The girl, eight years of age, born, according to the testimony of her
father, with the frontal fontanelle (fonticulus anterior) closed and
solid, had a smaller head than a child of one year. The notes follow the
same order as that of the observations.

_Time, 8.15 A. M._--The child yawns. She grasps with animation at some
human skulls that she sees on a table near her, and directs her look to
charts on the walls. She puts her fingers into her nostrils, brushes her
apron with both hands, polishes my watch, which I have offered her and
she has seized, holds it to one ear, then to one of her father's ears,
draws her mouth into a smile, seems to be pleased by the ticking, holds
the watch to her father's other ear, then to her own other ear, laughs,
and repeats the experiment several times. Her head is very mobile.

The child now folds a bit of paper that I have given her, rolls it up
awkwardly, wrinkling her forehead the while, chews up the paper and
laughs aloud. Saliva flows from her mouth almost incessantly. Then the
child begins to eat a biscuit, giving some of it, however, to her father
and the attendant, putting her biscuit to their lips, and this with
accuracy at once, whereas in the fo