280 PROCEEDINGS OP THE ACADEMY OF 



origin or parentage is not necessarily connected with that of cranial iorms, if 

 is evident that if we accept for man the recognised principles of zoological 

 classification, we must regard the human family as a genus represented by nu- 

 merous species, whose differential characters touch, so to speak, or even over- 

 lap each other. There is undoubtedly a serial unity of all human crania. 

 There is, in other words, a human cranial type the type of a natural class or 

 family widely separated from the most anthropomorphous apes a type sus- 

 ceptible of very numerous, but individually limited, modifications, the result 

 of climatic conditions, and persisting as long as the conditions which bring 

 them into existence continue ; a type susceptible, also, of hybrid modifications, 

 which though ephemeral and not self-sustaining as are the great stocks, are 

 transitionary and therefore valuable as showing all the possible variations of 

 the primal or central form. All these variations tend constantly to assume^ 

 the normal type, to assume it indirectly or spirally, as it were, so that the ex- 

 tremest departure from the type is bound to the latter through graduated 

 forms, in such a manner that when the extremes of the series are compared 

 together with reference to these forms, it is difficult to point out the constant 

 and unvarying differential characters. 



October 4th. 



Mr. Lea, President, in the Chair. 

 Thirty-four members present. 



The Publication Committee laid on the table part 2 of vol. 4, second 

 series of the Journal of the Academy. 



October llth. 



Mr. Lea, President, in the Chair. 



Thirty three members present. 



The President announced the death at Nut^rove, Dear Liverpool, 

 England, of Mr. Thomas Nuttall, late a correspondent of the Academy. 



October ISth. 

 Mr. Lea, President, in the Chair. 



Forty-seven members present. 



Papers were presented for publication in the Proceedings, entitled : 



Additions to the Coleopterous Fauna of Northern California and 

 Oregon, by John L. LeConte, M. I). 



Description of a new species of Unio, from the Isthmus of Darien, by 

 Isaac Lea. 



And were referred to Committees. 



Mr. Lea stated that having inadvertently used the specific term of Etowahen- 

 sis for a Margaritana, whicb name had already been occupied by a species de- 

 scribed by Mr. Conrad, in the Proceedings of the Academy, he now proposed 

 the name of Georgiana for his species. 



The Committee on Proceedings laid on the table the Proceedings of 

 the Academy for August and September, of the present year. 

 The following resolutions offered by Mr. Lea were adopted : 



[Oct. 



