BRAHMA
BRAIN
while yet a tad he had saved enough pocket money to purchase a copy of Ptolemy's works, published at Basel in 1551.
At the age of 37, Brahe was placed in possession of a superb astronomical observatory, which had been built for him by King Frederick II of Denmark on the island Hven. Besides two towers 75 feet high, this observatory included a library, a residence, a chemical laboratory, a mechanical workshop, a printing office, a paper mill and the necessary farm buildings. To the entire outfit he gave the name of Uranienborg. Here he spent seventeen years in active observation. This observatory was completely destroyed in 1652. A change of rulers in Denmark brought disaster to Brahe and caused him to remove to Prague, where he was again established in a good observatory by Kaiser Rudolph II, and was assisted by his distinguished pupil, John Kepler.
To Brahe we owe the method of determining latitude by measuring the upper and lower culmination of a star, a vastly more accurate method than that used by Copernicus, viz., observations on the sun in meridian
We owe to him also a star map and the discovery of several new features in the moon's motion.
Brahe was not, as has sometimes been reported, an opponent of the Copernican system; but he saw that the ideas of Copernicus needed modification before they could be made to fit the then present state of knowledge. In estimating his work we must remember that it was all done before the invention of the telescope, before Kepler's laws were discovered, and before any physical connection (which we now call gravitation) between the sun and planets was dreamed of, much less studied and accurately described, as was done later by Newton.
Brahma and Brahmanism. See INDIA.
Brahmaputra (brd'md-poo'trd), meaning "son of Brahma," one of the largest rivers of India, rises in Tibet. After a course of probably 1,800 miles, together with the Ganges, it empties into the Bay of Bengal, through a vast delta. During the rainy season it floods an area of hundreds of i quare miles, and makes fertile vast plains, which yield an abundance of rice, jute and mustard. Boats can ply upon its waters for 800 miles, and a vast traffic is carried both up and down the river. Europeans became acquainted with the river in 1765.
Brahms (brdmz), Johannes, a notable German pianist and composer, was born at Hamburg, in 1833, an4 died at Vienna, April 3, 1897. His musical compositions are chiefly orchestral, though to the educated lover of music his choral compositions take by far the higher place. He has been styled the modern Beethoven, and by
others is deemed the great rival of Wagner. He is more popularly known, however, by his many songs, ballads and choruses.
Brain, the seat of mental life and voluntary action. It is therefore the most interesting organ of the body. The brain and spinal cord, taken together, are called the central nervous system, for they form a sort of central axis, from which nerves pass to the various parts of the body and to which nerves lead from the surface. The brain of the higher animals is so much changed by growth and development that it is very difficult to understand. It has undergone so many changes in the course of evolution, that we must examine the brains of the simpler vertebrates in order to see what they were like before they became so modified. A glance at the accompanying sketches will tell more than words. It shows the general nature of the changes to be growth in size and complexity of the cerebral hemispheres, and we can see also that a series of brains merge by small changes into one another, so that the simplest and most complex are connected by intermediate forms.
The sketches represent the brains of various animals seen from above after removal from the cranium. In the brain of the perch (Fig. i), the parts are all arranged in a row or line. The part marked F. B. is, in all the figures, that part of the fore-brain called cerebral lobes. In Fig. i, they are smaller than the lobes of the mid-brain (M. B.). The latter are also called optic lobes. Behind these is a single lobe marked H. B., which is the cerebellum or main part of the hind-brain. (The complete hind-brain embraces the cerebellum and the medulla oblongata.) In the frog (Fig. 2), the relative size of parts has changed. The cerebral lobes (F. B.) are now larger than those of the mid-brain. The lobes in front of the cerebral lobes are in all the sketches, the olfactory lobes, connected with the nerves of smell. The difference in size between the central lobes and those of the mid-brain, is more marked in the brain of the alligator (Fig. 3). In the pigeon (Fig. 4), the increase, relatively, in size of the cerebral lobes is much greater; they have expanded till they are now in contact with the cerebellum, and the lobes of the mid-brain are partly covered. The same line of modification is carried further in the brain of the rabbit (Fig. 5). Here the cerebral lobes are very large when compared with those of the mid-brain, and the cerebellum is ringed or divided into segments. Note, now, that the surface of the cerebral lobes is smooth in the rabbit and the bird, but in the dog (Fig. 6), we have a new development; the surface of the fore-brain is thrown into convolu-
