348 BETIEWS. 



trious V. Baer, and under which is comprehended that department of 

 the great science of General Anthropology which embraces more 

 particularly the study of the physical characters of the different 

 varieties of the Human Eace, and which has of late assumed more 

 and more the features of a definite branch of Science. 



Long confined in great measure to Ethnologists, and not very 

 sedulously, and by no means very successfully cultivated even by 

 them, it has in more recent times begiui to claim its due importance 

 in the eyes of the Zoologist and Comparative Anatomist. It has also 

 become one of the most useful aids to the Archaeologist, and even, it 

 may be said, to the Greologist, whose pursuits seem at length to be 

 converging to a common point. 



The great questions embraced by Comparative Anthropology, 

 concern not only the true nature and value of the diversities so mani- 

 festly exliibited in the different varieties of the existing races of man- 

 kind, but also those relating to the connection between them and the 

 priscan populations whose remains have of late years more especially 

 occupied the attention of philosophical enquirers. 



Much has been done and great labour has been expended on this 

 branch of science, but, nevertheless, some of the most important 

 problems connected with it still await solution. Its hitherto limited 

 progress may be assigned to several circumstances, amongst which it 

 may chiefly perhaps be noticed that the purely physical enquiry — 

 witli which, regarding Comparative Anthropology as apart of Zoology, 

 we alone have to do, — has been in great measure postponed as it 

 were to the philological ; a course which a little consideration will, we 

 think, show to be unlikely to lead to any satisfactory result. But it 

 is also attended with inherent difficulties of its own, regarded simply 

 as a physical enquiry. The difficulties attending the investigation of 

 the diversities of human beings, it is scarcely necessary to observe 

 are far greater than are met with in other branches of Zoology. In 

 the case of animals and plants, copious collections can be made and 

 stored up in museums for accurate and leisurely examination and 

 comparison, but it would be impossible to make similar collections of 

 the different forms of the human race. At best but few perfect 

 specimens of pure or unmixed races (to use an indefinite term) can be 

 obtained, and the Anthropologist at home is compelled to rely for the 

 materials of his studies upon the incomplete descriptions and imper- 

 fect figures of travellers, or upon such fragmentary portions of the 

 body as can be easily obtained and transported. 



A Gorilla or a Chimpanzee can be caught and sent alive to the 

 Zoological Gardens, or killed and forwarded in a cask of rUm to the 

 British Museum, but loud would be the outcry were similar attempts 

 made to promote the study of Anthropology. 



It follows that the principal part of our materials for this study 

 can consist only of the more permanent and portable portions of the 

 frame. Amongst these it is manifest, for many reasons, that the 

 cranium taken singly is by far the most important, and it is to this 



