suffused with tears. A similar slight effusion occurred ten days previously in both eyes during a screaming-fit. The tears did not run over the eyelids and roll down the cheeks of this child, while screaming badly, when one hundred and twenty-two days old. This first happened seventeen days later, at the age of one hundred and thirty-nine days. A few other children have been observed for me, and the period of free weeping appears to be very variable. In one case, the eyes became slightly suffused at the age of only twenty days; in another, at sixty-two days. With two other children, the tears did not run down the face at the ages of eighty-four and one hundred and ten days; but in a third child they did run down at the age of one hundred and four days. In one instance, as I was positively assured, tears ran down at the unusually early age of forty-two days. It would appear as if the lachrymal glands required some practice in the individual before they are easily excited into action, in somewhat the same manner as various inherited consensual movements and tastes require some exercise before they are fixed and perfected. This is all the more likely with a habit like weeping, which must have been acquired since the period when man branched off from the common progenitor of the genus Homo and of the non-weeping anthropomorphous apes. Page 135. A woman, who sold a monkey to the Zoological Society, believed to have come from Borneo (Macacus maurus or M. inornatus of Gray), said that it often cried; and Mr. Bartlett, as well as the keeper Mr. Sutton, have repeatedly seen it, when grieved, or even when much pitied, weeping so copiously that the tears rolled down its cheeks. Page 155. A New Zealand chief "cried like a child because the sailors spoiled his favorite cloak by powdering it with flour." I saw in Tierra del Fuego a native who had lately lost a brother, and who alternately cried with hysterical violence, and laughed heartily at anything which amused him. With the civilized nations of Europe there is also much difference in the frequency of weeping. Englishmen rarely cry, except under the pressure of the acutest grief; whereas, in some parts of the Continent, the men shed tears much more readily and freely. The insane notoriously give way to all their emotions with little or no restraint; and I am informed by Dr. J. Crichton Browne that nothing is more characteristic of simple melancholia, even in the male sex, than a tendency to weep on the slightest occasions, or from no cause. They also weep disproportionately on the occurrence of any real cause of grief. The length of time during which some patients weep is astonishing, as well as the amount of tears which they shed. The Indian elephant is known sometimes Page 167. to weep. Sir E. Tennent, in describing those which he saw captured and bound in Ceylon, says some "lay motionless on the ground, with no other indication of suffering than the tears which suffused their eyes and flowed incessantly." Speaking of another elephant he says: "When overpowered and made fast, his grief was most affecting; his violence sank to utter prostration, and he lay on the ground, uttering choking cries, with tears trickling down his cheeks." THE GRIEF-MUSCLES. Expression of With respect to the eyebrows, they may the Emotions, occasionally be seen to assume an oblique popage 180. sition in persons suffering from deep dejection or anxiety; for instance, I have observed this movement in a mother while speaking about her sick son; and it is sometimes excited by quite trifling or momentary causes of real or pretended distress. The eyebrows assume this position owing to the contraction of certain muscles (namely, the orbiculars, corrugators, and pyramidals of the nose, which together tend to lower and contract the eyebrows) being partially checked by the more powerful action of the central fascia of the frontal muscle. These latter fasciæ, by their contraction, raise the inner ends alone of the eyebrows; and, as the corrugators at the same time draw the eyebrows together, their inner ends become puckered into a fold or lump. The eyebrows are at the same time somewhat roughened, owing to the hairs being made to project. Dr. J. Crichton Browne has also often noticed, in melancholic patients who keep their eyebrows persistently oblique, "a peculiar acute arching of the upper eyelid." The acute arching of the eyelids depends, I believe, on the inner end alone of the eyebrows being raised; for, when the whole eyebrow is elevated and arched, the upper eyelid follows in a slight degree the same movement. But the most conspicuous result of the opposed contraction of the above-named muscles is exhibited by the peculiar furrows formed on the forehead. These muscles, when thus in conjoint yet opposed action, may be called, for the sake of brevity, the grief-muscles. When a person elevates his eyebrows by the contraction of the whole frontal muscle, transverse wrinkles extend across the whole breadth of the forehead; but, in the present case, the middle fascia alone are contracted; consequently, transverse furrows are formed across the middle part alone of the forehead. The skin over the exterior parts of both eyebrows is at the same time drawn downward and smoothed by the contraction of the outer portions of the orbicular muscles. The eyebrows are likewise brought together through the simultaneous contraction of the corrugators; and this latter action generates vertical furrows, separating the exterior and lowered part of the skin of the forehead from the central and raised part. union of these vertical furrows with the central and transverse furrows produces a mark on the forehead which has been compared to a horseshoe; but the furrows more strictly form three sides of a quadrangle. They are often conspicuous on the foreheads of adult, or nearly adult, persons, when their eyebrows are made oblique ; but with young children, owing to their skin not easily wrinkling, they are rarely seen, or mere traces of them can be detected. The VOLUNTARY POWER OVER THE GRIEF-MUSCLES. Page 183. Few persons, without some practice, can voluntarily act on their grief-muscles; but, after repeated trials, a considerable number succeed, while others never can. The degree of obliquity in the eyebrows, whether assumed voluntarily or unconsciously, differs much in different persons. With some who apparently have unusually strong pyramidal muscles, the contraction of the central fascia of the frontal muscle, although it may be energetic, as shown by the quadrangular furrows on the forehead, does not raise the inner ends of the eyebrows, but only prevents their being so much lowered as they otherwise would have been. As far as I have been able to observe, the grief-muscles are brought into action much more frequently by children and women than by men. They are rarely acted on, at least with grown-up persons, from bodily pain, but almost exclusively from mental distress. Two persons, who, after some practice, succeeded in acting on their grief-muscles, found by looking at a mirror that, when they made their eyebrows oblique, they unintentionally at the same time depressed the corners of their mouths; and this is often the case when the expression is naturally assumed. The power to bring the grief-muscles freely into play appears to be hereditary, like almost every other human faculty. A lady belonging to a family famous for having produced an extraordinary number of great actors and actresses, and who can herself give this expression "with singular precision," told Dr. Crichton Browne that all her family had possessed the power in a remarkable degree. The same hereditary tendency is said to have extended, as I likewise hear from Dr. Browne, to the last descendant of the family, which gave rise to Sir Walter Scott's novel of "Red Gauntlet"; but the hero is described as contracting his forehead into a horseshoe mark from any strong emotion. I have also seen a young woman whose forehead seemed almost habitually thus contracted, independently of any emotion being at the time felt. The grief-muscles are not very frequently brought into play; and, as the action is often momentary, it easily escapes observation. Although the expression, when observed, is universally and instantly recognized as that of grief or anxiety, yet not one person out of a thousand who has never studied the subject is able to say precisely what change passes over the sufferer's face. Hence proba |