we hear it said that women will cease to be womanly if they enter professions or occasionally vote in parliamentary elections, we think that those who conjure up these terrors should try to understand women better, and should rid themselves of the habit of being frightened about nothing."[14]

The limits of this essay will not permit me to dwell at any great length on the important question under consideration. There cannot be a doubt that the tendency of the present age is to encourage women to choose careers and to accept burdens unfitted for them. In thus expressing myself, I distinctly deprecate any hostility to the woman's movement of the present day, which rests on the claim for women for an open career; and I should be glad to see our universities ignore the ancient and exploded prejudices, which led to the long subjection of women to hardship and inequality. They ask for the same facilities as are enjoyed by men, and they have amply shown that they can compete with men in intellectual pursuits, and all they ask is to be allowed to compete on equal terms. I therefore cordially welcome the gradual emancipation of women from comparative subjection to comparative freedom; but the multifarious fields of energy and usefulness open to modern women, have brought with them disadvantages as well as gains.

Whilst, therefore, unreservedly admitting the claims of the fin de siècle woman to freedom of action and to intellectual equality, I must think there are certain branches of study, described by a modern writer as belonging to the "gynagogue" class, which are less suited to women than some others; and amongst these, I would name the abstruse study of mathematics, for although success in this branch of knowledge may lead to a brilliant career as a high wrangler, I think that a female mathematical athlete is not suited for the duties and responsibilities of maternity, and that the mental endowments of her children are likely to be below the average.

I am quite aware that I am treading on dangerous and delicate ground, but although I would not discourage the highest aspirations of women, whether of an intellectual, social, or æsthetic character, I must think that a word of caution is necessary against the overpressure of the present day in the direction above indicated.[15] With every desire to treat this question from a liberal point of view, I desire to emphasise the fact that men and women have different parts to play on the stage of life, and should be trained differently; but provided mental overpressure is guarded against, I have no fear of women engaging in certain occupations which custom has not hitherto recognised as feminine, and experience has shown us that they may be safely left to follow the promptings of their own powers and instincts.

Amongst the various other predispositions to idiocy, I would mention scrofula, which, according to Dr. Ireland, is the remote cause of two-thirds of all cases; phthisis and epilepsy in the parents are also potent factors in the development of idiocy in their offspring.

Before quitting the question of the cause of idiocy, I should like to say a word or two about what is technically called its histology and its pathological anatomy. What is there in the brain that makes one man a senior wrangler and another an idiot? What is it that unfits one person for the discharge of the ordinary duties of domestic and social life, and endows another with capacities adapted for a statesman, a mathematician, or a philosopher? Is it a defect in the quantity or in the quality of the nervous matter of the brain? Does it depend on a malformation of the cranium, on the size or shape of the head? does the form of a cranium illustrate the quality of the mind whose cerebral substratum it encloses, or can genius of a high order enshrine itself in a comparatively narrow and malconstructed tenement?[16] Does mental capacity depend on the size or weight of the brain, or on the degree of complexity of the cerebral convolutions, or on their symmetry in each hemisphere?[17] Upon this point, I am bound to tell you that science speaks with a somewhat uncertain sound, volumes having been written upon it without any definite solution or tangible result.

An eminent Italian psychologist, Dr. Mingazzini, in a recent work on the study of the cerebral convolutions, shows that in men of genius, the brain offers no certain indications of intellectual eminence, either by the greater richness of the frontal or the parietal lobes; and in support of this opinion he cites the researches of Wagner, which showed that, in the development and richness of the convolutions, the brains of many celebrated Gottingen professors were inferior to those belonging to individuals of low intellectual capacity.[18]

The average brain weight in man may be said to range from 40 to 52½ ounces, and in women from 35 to 37½ ounces; the question of the increase in size and weight of the brain, in proportion to intellectual power, is by no means determined; statistics exist of the weight of 23 eminent men, the list being headed by Cuvier, the naturalist, whose brain weighed 64½ ounces, whilst that of the orator, Gambetta, weighed only 39 ounces, being much below the average weight in the adult male; an imbecile died at the Montrose Asylum, whose brain weighed 63 ounces, and the heaviest brain on record, which weighed 67 ounces, was that of a bricklayer, who could neither read nor write; it must therefore be conceded that no definite statement can be made as to the relation that brain weight has to intelligence.[19]

It was formerly supposed that idiots always presented some obvious malformation of the cranium or skull. This is by no means necessarily the case; one of the most remarkable cases of idiocy that has come under my notice was that of a child with a well-formed head, remarkably handsome face, and a well-proportioned body.

Dr. Ireland says, "the principal anomalies met with in the skull of genetic idiots are flatness of the head behind, a rapid slope of the clivus, an osseous rim round the foramen magnum, unsymmetrical size of the cavities on each side, irregularities in the wings of the sphenoid, and differences in the size and shape of the jugular and other foramina; but these appearances are not constant, and often the skull is quite regular,