BOOKS RECEIVED. The Ethnological Journal. The numbers for January, February, and March. The Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental Pathology, edited by Forbes Winslow, M.D. January, 1849. A Notice of the late Sir George Stewart Mackenzie, Bart. A Narrative of the proceedings relative to the appointment of the Medical Officers to the Portsmouth, Portsea, and Gosport Hospital. By W. C. Engledue, M.D., formerly President of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh."If an offence come out of the Truth, better is it that the offence come, than the Truth be concealed."-Jerome. Though this pamphlet relates to a local matter, it is worth reading as an instance of a stand made for principle: and a few passages will not be unacceptable: "With the great bulk of society, life is merely the following of a few inferior instincts, with a perfect blindness as to consequences. Selfishness is the ruling passion of the majority, and it is shown on every trivial opportunity." p. 35. "I wished not to bolster myself up with advantages which were not enjoyed equally by all my brethren. I entered on the race of life free and unfettered, and free and unfettered I will remain. No man shall point the finger of scorn at me, and declare that in my social career, I took that which I did not use my best exertions to give him an opportunity of possessing. I will run the race, and I will use my best endeavours to win, but it shall be on fair and equal terms. I will take nothing from the world which is not honestly, truly, and manfully earned. These are my feelings, my weaknesses. They may be designated Utopian-visionary-Quixotic, or anything else the reader may please, there is at any rate this quality attached to them-they cannot be disrobed of the dignity of reason-the dignity of truth." p. 44. "The shallow pates are ever the obstructives. Incapable of originating a thought of any magnitude for their own or their neighbour's real improvement, they are employed in fluttering through their little day and crying down what they can neither understand nor appreciate, or what their selfish and grasping propensities prompt them to imagine may become inimical to their own interests. It is thus in matters appertaining to the physical world-it is similar with matters belonging to the moral world. Where is the man who has advanced a scheme for the improvement of his fellow man without having to fight his way step by step against the prejudices of his compeers, and having to remove too often single-handed, the obstructions wantonly placed in his path by those who should have been foremost in rendering him assistance? All schemes are denounced by such men as visionary-all innovators are presumed by such men to have emigrated from the land of Utopia, and they continue their opposition for years, thus conducting themselves like cattle in a field towards a newly-erected rubbingpost-for they are at first frightened-then shy-then a little bold—and at last becoming familiarized with the intrusion they very quietly put the thing to its proper use. Yes, the dial of the world is moved on by those whom the world persecutes. The pioneers are the martyrs. When the millions reap the advantanges previously shadowed forth by the few, then they begin to think how vile their treatment has been; and when the brains which gave birth to the propelling thoughts, have been resolved into their elements and the men no longer live, then their memories are worshipped and the marble pile is reared to denote that such men once lived." p. 50. NOTICE TO CORRESPONDENTS. We regret that many valuable communications must be postponed. THE ZOIST. No. XXVI. JULY, 1849. I. An Account of the Head of Rush, the Norfolk Murderer. By Dr. ELLIOTSON. THE true nature of Rush cannot be mistaken. It is certain that he was, in every respect, an atrocious villain, and a villain of extraordinary force of character. His acts were such that his whole nature is unveiled: and, if the development of his head had not agreed according to Gall's principles with his life, Gall's physiology of the brain must have fallen to the ground for ever. For a cerebral physiologist may always, without fear, assert positively of the head from constant, positive, exhibition of a mental faculty, because constant strength of certain parts of the mind is accompanied by strong development of certain parts of the brain, and consequently of the skull; just as he may always fearlessly assert negatively of the mental faculties from negative exhibitions of the head, because deficient development of certain parts of the brain, and consequently of the skull, is accompanied by deficient strength of certain mental faculties: although, conversely, he would not assert respecting mental faculties from positive exhibitions of the head, nor respecting the head from negative exhibitions of mental faculties, because the development of the head may arise from other causes than brain, or the quality of the brain may not be healthy; and on the other hand deficiency of the manifestation of certain mental faculties may arise from mere want of excitement or from disease.* Therefore, before we saw the cast of Rush's head, we all declared that his head must have been very large;-the organs of the disposition to violence, of courage, and of the love of property, of cun * See my Human Physiology, pp. 373-4. I lament to say that mine is the only Physiology in the English language that sets forth and defends phrenology and mesmerism. VOL. VII. K ning, of the love of the opposite sex, and of food, enormously large; while those of self-esteem and love of notoriety, with the lower range of intellectual organs, must have been large; and, provided the brain were healthy, the organs of justice and caution, and the higher intellectual organs, small. The man was a farmer, land agent, and auctioneer and appraiser, in West Norfolk; of middle age, rather below the middle height, very muscular, with broad shoulders, short neck, massive head inclined rather to the right shoulder, and a slouching gait, and a countenance which made people dislike him and say they should not wish to meet him in the dark. On the evening of the 28th of last November, he went, masked and otherwise disguised, and without any accomplice, to Stanfield Hall, the house of a neighbouring gentleman, named Jermy, whom he shot dead in the porch, where he knew his victim would be at that time; entered the house by the servants' door and shot the son dead in the hall, coolly and successfully motioning the butler to retire to his pantry; and then shot and wounded the mistress and her maid, saying, "Poor thing, poor thing!" when he saw the latter fall whom he had not aimed at, and firing a second time at Mrs. Jermy. He also pursued Miss Jermy, but she escaped into the stables. He then withdrew to his own home. These may not have been the only murders committed by him.-In 1844, he and his father-in-law had been shooting at the farm of the latter, and, after returning to the house, his father was shot. The account given by Rush was, that, after directing his father's attention to the excellence of his gun, he left the room while his father was examining it, but almost immediately heard a report, and on going back found that the gun had gone off, lodging all its contents in his father's head.-In August, 1848, his mother having been ill for some time, he told her nurse one evening, as the woman reports, that he would sit up with his mother that night, and on the woman's objecting he insisted. After the nurse had been in bed some time, she saw Rush enter her room, as if he wished to ascertain whether she was asleep. He made no remark and went away. About four in the morning he went into the room again, and she asked how her mistress was. "Oh," he replied, "you need not trouble yourself, she has been dead these four hours." The nurse jumped up, and found that Rush had laid his mother out and performed all the necessary offices himself.—A salesman, named Collins, who had done business for Rush, and at whose house Rush had once spent a day and night, returned the visit at Rush's earnest invitation, though Mrs. Collins strongly objected to her husband going and said there was something |