There is evidently some good material at Topolobampo. Ida Hogeland wrote, July 30, 1887:
"Let not your heart be troubled. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, up to this last day of July that has interfered with our bodily comfort, though we live in tents yet. The showers are so gentle and refreshing that they serve as a perpetual delight."
"But whether stockholders do their part or not, we are here to do our part in solving the great question of Integral Co-operation, and if we fail it is their fault. But we do not intend to fail. We have men here of the right grit, and enough of them to hold the fort. So you need not be alarmed on that account. A. K. Owen has not lied to us about the resources of the country."
Mr. Owen promises to bring in a hundred good colonists in November, and says the Mexican government manifests a friendly feeling.
The map of Gall presented here is taken from his large work published from 1809 to 1819 (price 1000 francs), the latter part being finished without the co-operation of Spurzheim. The great imperfection is apparent at a glance. Gall simply published what he saw, or thought he saw, and being a very imperfect, inaccurate observer of forms and outlines, he attached himself chiefly to the idea of prominences (or bumps) at certain localities, and to his mode of presenting the subject we are mainly indebted for the ridicule of phrenology as a science of bumps. I have taken much pains to assure my students that cerebral science has little or nothing to do with bumps, that bumps upon the skull belong to its osseous structure, which presents certain protuberances with which they should be acquainted, and do not indicate development of brain, which is indicated by gentle changes in the contour of the skull, the form of which shows how much room there is for special convolutions.
To Gall's drawing, which was by no means accurate, I have added the names of the organs as he recognized them, and given definite boundaries to the organs which he represented by a shaded drawing, conveying the idea of a central elevation. I have given them the whole space allowed by his shading, and this leaves considerable space unoccupied, as if he did not know what lay between them. Spurzheim, on the contrary, attempted to cover the entire ground, and had a more harmonious arrangement than Gall, in whose map we see the inventive faculty running into murder, and avarice into music and poetry. Yet even Spurzheim retained avarice in contact with ideality, invention, hope, and conscientiousness. Neither seems to have realized that there is no example in the brain of a single convolution perfectly homogeneous, and even intermingled in its minute structure, suddenly changing its essential functions into something entirely opposite, when there is not the slightest separation or differentiation of the cerebral matter. When such marked differences are perceptible, it is due to the separation of the convolutions by the furrows or anfractuosities into which the pia mater descends, making a substantial separation. But this nice survey of the convolutions and their boundaries was obviously impossible by cranioscopy, which, at the best, could only recognize considerable differences of magnitude. Psychometry alone is capable of minute exploration of functions, the results of which I published in a large map of the head in 1842.