o93 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF 



2 Araucanians ; 25 Peruvians ; 4 Chinese ; 9 Sandwich Islanders ; 2 Mar- 

 ques ans ; 1 Feejee; 2 Swedes; 2 Thugs; 1 Hindoo; 1 Tchuktchi ; 1 Ice- 

 lander ; 1 Cossack and 2 Negroes. 



The donors and depositors of these crania are Drs. W. S. W. Ruschenberger, 

 Thomas J. Turner, J. E. Seniple, and H. B. Trist, of the United States Navy ; 

 Drs. E. H. Abaddie and J. Letterman, of the United States Army; Prof. Wm. 

 A. Hammond, Drs. J Dickson Bruns, J. H. Slack, J. Clifford Parker, J. B. S. 

 Jackson, and Messrs. George Gibbs, John Biddle, N. P. Buckley, Charles C. 

 Abbott, and the writer of this article. 



Forty-six of these crania were procured some of them with considerable 

 difficulty by my enterprising friend and former school-mate, Passed Assistant 

 Surgeon Thomas J. Turner, chiefly during his cruise in the Pacific. It affords 

 me much pleasure to acknowledge, thus publicly, the value of his indefatiga- 

 ble and intelligent efforts to promote the interests of craniographic science. 

 The thanks of those interested in this important branch of knowledge are also 

 due to the gentlemen whose names are mentioned above. 



Chiefly upon this collection, thus increased in the number and ethnical 

 variety of its specimens, are based the following observations, which, in their 

 general scope and tendency, may be regarded as a continuation of the leading 

 inquiry started in my paper on the Jerusalem skull, which was published in 

 the Proceedings of the Academy for September, 1859. 



That inquiry, it may be remembered, was to ascertain whether from the 

 form of the entire skull, or of some characteristic part of it, the race as well 

 as the type to which any particular cranium belonged, could be definitely 

 determined. As the basis of this .inquiry, a fragmentary head was selected, 

 having a very peculiar occipital conformation, but whose ethnical origin was 

 wholly unknown. This cranium was subjected to a severe critical analysis 

 and comparison with other heads in the collection. In the course of this 

 comparison, whose leading results have already been communicated to the 

 Academy, the following observations were made, and are now brought forward 

 as. another contribution to the sum of recorded human knowledge, and an 

 additional step towards the emancipation of Ethnology from the dogmatism 

 and conjectural assertion with which a host of pseudo-scientific writers have 

 so industriously surrounded it, in their ill-advised attempts to solve definitely 

 certain great questions concerning the origin and primitive affiliations of the 

 races of men. 



In the \evy front rank of ethnological inquiry stands Craniography. As 

 the epitome, not of the skeleton merely, but also of the entire physical man, 

 the cranium, by some of the best observers and profoundest thinkers of 

 modern times, lias justly been regarded as capable of furnishing valuable 

 information concerning the zoological relations of the different races of men. 

 This conviction animates the " Cephalogenesis " of Spix, the "Decades 

 Craniorum " of Blumenbach, the numerous and important craniological 

 papers of Retzius, the " Tabulse Craniorum" of Sandifort, the "Crania 

 Americana" and "Crania iEgyptiaca " of Morton, the " Atlas der Cranio- 

 scopie " of Cams, the "Crania Britannica " of Davis and Thurnam, the 

 " Organischen Formenlehre " of Lucre, the " Schsedel, Hirn und Seele des 

 Menschen und der Thiere " of Huschke, the "Crania Selecta " of K. E. Von 

 Baer, and most recently of all the " Catalogus Craniorum Diversarum 

 Gentium " of Prof. J. Van der Hoeven, of Leyden, well known as an able 

 observer and a zealous cultivator of the natural history of man. 



It must be confessed, however, that owing to the limited number of speci- 

 mens in the various cranial collections, and the genealogical uncertainty 

 whk-h surrounds many of those which have been figured and described by 

 different observers, craniography can, as yet, boast of but few established 

 principles. The cranial descriptions published by Blumenbach and many of 

 his successors are entirely too brief and vague for the purposes of that exact 



[Sept. 



