which he could feel even his life in safety from their violence; for they had by that time retaliated the blows with which he had visited them in their younger years; and he stated, that he actually considered his life to be in danger from his own offspring.

In another family, the mother possesses an excellent development of the moral and intellectual organs, while, in the father, the animal organs predominate in great excess. She has been the unhappy victim of ceaseless misfortune, originating from the misconduct of her husband. Some of the children have inherited the father's brain, and some the mother's; and of the sons whose heads resembled the father's, several have died through mere debauchery and profligacy under thirty years of age; whereas those who resemble the mother are alive and little contaminated, even amidst all the disadvantages of evil example.

On the other hand, I am not acquainted with a single instance in which the moral and intellectual organs predominated in size, in both father and mother, and whose external circumstances also permitted their general activity, in which the whole children did not partake of a moral and intellectual character, differing slightly in degrees of excellence one from another, but all presenting the decided predominance of the human over the animal faculties.

A lady possessing a large brain and active temperament, was employed professionally as a teacher of music. Her husband also had a fine temperament, and well constituted brain, but his talents for music were only moderate. They had several children, all of whom were produced while the mother was in the full practice of her profession, and they all now indicate superior musical abilities. They have learned to play on several instruments, as if by instinct, and promise to excel. In this case the original endowments of the mother, and her active exercise of them, conspired to transmit them to her children.

There are other instances in which the character of particular children appears to bear relation to the condition of the parents, or of one or other of them, at the time of their production. A friend told me that in his youth he lived in a county in which the gentlemen were much addicted to hard drinking; and that he, too frequently, took a part in their revels. Several of his sons, born at that time, although subsequently educated in a very different or moral atmosphere, turned out strongly addicted to inebriety; whereas the children born after he had removed to a large town, and formed more correct habits, were not the victims of this propensity. Another individual, of superior talents, described to me the wild and mischievous revelry in which he indulged at the time of his marriage, and congratulated himself on his subsequent domestication and moral improvement. His eldest son, born in his riotous days, notwithstanding a strictly moral education, turned out a personification of the father's actual condition at that time; and his younger children were more moral in proportion as they were removed from the period of vicious frolics. The mother, in this case, possessed a favorable development of brain.

There are well-known examples of the children of religious and moral fathers exhibiting dispositions of a very inferior description; but in all of these instances that I have been able to observe, there has been a large development of the animal organs in the one parent, which was just controlled, but not much more, by the moral and intellectual powers; and in the other parent, the moral organs did not appear to be in large proportion. The unfortunate child inherited the large animal development of the one, with the defective moral development of the other; and, in this way, was inferior to both. The way to satisfy one's self on this point, is to examine the heads of the parents. In all such cases, a large base of the brain, which is the region of the animal propensities, will very probably be found in one or other of them.

Another organic law of the animal kingdom deserves attention, viz. that by which marriages betwixt blood relations tend decidedly to the deterioration of the physical and mental qualities of the offspring. In Spain kings marry their nieces, and, in this country, first and second cousins marry without scruple; although every philosophical physiologist will declare that this is in direct opposition to the institutions of nature. This law holds also in the vegetable kingdom. A provision, of a very simple kind, is, in some cases, made to prevent the male and female blossoms of the same plant from breeding together, this being found to hurt the breed of vegetables, just as breeding in and in does the breed of animals. It is contrived, that the dust shall be shed by the male blossom before the female is ready to be affected by it, so that the impregnation must be performed by the dust of some other plant, and in this way the breed be crossed.'-Objects, &c. of Science, p. 33.

On the same principle, it is found highly advantageous in agriculture not to sow grain of the same stock in constant succession on the same soil. In individual instances, if the soil and plants are both possessed of great vigor and the highest qualities, the same kind of grain may be reaped in succession twice or thrice, with less perceptible deterioration than where these elements of reproduction are feeble and imperfect; and the same fact occurs in the animal kingdom. If the first individuals connected in near relationship, who unite in marriage, are uncommonly robust, and possess very favorably developed brains, their offspring may not be so much deteriorated below the common standard of the country as to attract particular attention, and the law of nature is, in this instance, supposed not to hold; but it does hold, for to a law of nature there never is an exception. The offspring are uniformly inferior to what they would have been, if the parents had united with strangers in blood of equal vigor and cerebral development. Whenever there is any remarkable deficiency in

parents who are related in blood, these appear in the most marked and aggravated forms in the offspring. This fact is so well known, and so easily ascertained, that I forbear to enlarge upon it. So much for miseries arising from neglect of the organic laws in forming the domestic compact.

I proceed to advert to those evils which arise from overlooking the operation of the same laws in the ordinary relations of society.

How many little annoyances arise from the misconduct of servants and dependents in various departments of life; how many losses, and sometimes ruin, arise from dishonesty and knavery in confidential clerks, partners, and agents. A mercantile house of great reputation, in London, was ruined and became bankrupt, by a clerk having embezzled a prodigious extent of funds, and absconded to America; another company in Edinburgh, sustained a great loss by a similar piece of dishonesty; a company in Paisley was ruined by one of the partners having collected the funds, and eloped with them to the United States; and several bankers, and other persons, suffered severely in Edinburgh, by the conduct of an individual, some time connected with the public press. It is said that depredations are constantly committed in the Post-offices of the United Kingdom, in spite of every effort made to select persons of the best character, and of the strictest vigilance exercised over their conduct. If it be true that the talents and dispositions of individuals are indicated and influenced by the development of their brains, and that their actual conduct is the result of this development, and of their external circumstances, including in the latter every moral and intellectual influence coming from without, it is obvious, that one and all of the evils here enumerated might, to a great extent, be obviated by the application of Phrenology. These misfortunes can be traced to the error of having placed human beings decidedly deficient in moral or intel

lectual qualities, in situations which demanded these in a higher degree than they possessed them; and any certain means by which the presence or absence of these qualities could be predicated, before their appointment, would go far to prevent the occurrence of the evils. The three following figures, for example, represent several of the organs most important in practical conduct in opposite states of development, and the dispositions of the individuals exactly corresponded with them.

If individuals having brains resembling those of Gibson and Haggart, both of whom were remarkable for dishonesty, should be placed in situations of trust, in which temptations to deception and embezzlement should be presented to them, which could be resisted only by strong sentiments of justice, their misconduct, sooner or later, would be almost certain, owing to the great size of their