1897.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 529 



acteristics in facial and cranial anatomy. It was clearly his inten- 

 tion to present this from a much wider comparative scheme had his 

 life been spared. 



He almost incidentally refers to a subject which interested him 

 deeply and on which he would have made more extended examina- 

 tions; that is, as above mentioned, the mental capacity of the indi- 

 vidual as a distinct cause of modified skull form. While this in it- 

 self is not new, he aimed to approach it by novel tests. 



The last lines of that memoir are indicative of his loftier estimate 

 of craniology than a mere criterion of race. As such, he did not 

 esteem it highly ; but he saw in the investigation of the nutritive, 

 psychical, cultural and morbid processes which alter the cranial 

 contours, admirable illustrations of those profound forces which 

 shape and mould life forms everywhere, and are the underlying 

 momenta of all morphology, whether of plants or animals. In this 

 comprehensive sense, craniology takes just rank among the great 

 and leading subjects of scientific investigation. 



Another feature in the memoir which will attract the student is 

 a novel graphic method of displaying similarities and differences of 

 skull form. Dr. Allen called it the " terrace method," and it has 

 obvious advantages over the curvilinear graphic systems now in 

 use. 



This brief review of Dr. Allen's labors in one branch of learning 

 would be still more imperfect did I neglect to record some of his 

 personal characteristics as a student and teacher of science. Every- 

 where his work was marked by a singular modesty of claim, by 

 entire justice to the labors of others in the same field, by gentleness 

 in criticising their results, by constant willingness to assist those 

 who sought information, by an earnest desire to stimulate the love 

 of knowledge for its own sake, and by unceasing efforts to present 

 this knowledge in its broadest relations both to human welfare and 

 abstract science. 



DR. HORN'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO COLEOPTEROLOGY. 



BY JOHN B. SMITH. 



When it is said that poets are born, not made, it is putting in a 

 loose and popular form the fact that men are unequally endowed at 

 birth ; that special faculties are inborn in some who, if they are 



