18 INTRODUCTION. 



In this table the measurements of children, idiots and mixed races are 

 omitted, excepting only in the instance of the Fellahs of Egypt, who, 

 however, are a blended stock of two Caucasian nations, the true Egyp- 

 tian and the intrusive Arab, in which the characteristics of the former 

 greatly predominate. 



No mean has been taken of the Caucasian race* collectively, because 

 of the very great preponderance of Hindu, Egyptian, and Fellah skulls 

 over those of the Germanic, Pelasgic and Celtic families. Nor could any 

 just collective conipai'ison be instituted between the Caucasian and Negro 

 groups in such a table, unless the small-brained people of the latter divi- 

 sion (Hottentots, Bushmen and Australians) were proportionate in number 

 to the Hindoos, Egyptians and Fellahs of the other group. Such a com- 

 putation, were it practicable, would probably reduce the Caucasian 

 average to about 87 cubic inches, and the Negro to 78 at most, perhaps 

 even to 75, and thus confirmatively establish the difiFerence of at least 

 nine cubic inches between the mean of the two races.f 



Philadelphia, Nov. 1, 1849. 



* It is necessary to explain what is here meant by the word race. Further researches 

 into Ethnographic affinities will probably demonstrate that what are now termed the five 

 races of men, would be more appropriately called groups that each of these groups is 

 again divisible into a greater or smaller number of primary races, each of which has ex- 

 panded from an aboriginal nucleus or centre. Thus I conceive that there were several 

 centres for the American group of races, of which the highest in the scale are the Tolte- 

 can nations, the lowest the Fuegians. Nor does tliis view conflict with the general prin- 

 ciple, that all these nations and tribes have had, as I have elsewhere expressed it, a com- 

 mon origin ; inasmuch as by this term is only meant an indigenous relation to the country 

 they inhabit, and that collective identity of physical traits, mental and moral endowments, 

 language, &c., which chracterize all the American races. The same remarks are appli- 

 cable to all the other human races ; but in the present infant state of Etluiographic sci" 

 ence, the designation of these primitive centres is a task of equal delicacy and difficulty" 

 I may here observe, that whenever I have ventured an opinion on this question, it has been 

 in favor of the doctrine of primeval diversities among men an original adaptation of the 

 several races to those varied circumstances of climate and locality, which, while conge- 

 nial to the one, arc destructive to the other ; and subsequent investigations have confirmed 

 me in these views, See Crania Americaiia, p. 3 ; Crania Aigyptiaea, p, 37 ; Distinctive 

 Characteristics of the Aboriginal Race of America, p. 36 ; Sillimans American Journal 

 of Science and the Arts, 1847; and my letter to J. R. Bartlett, Esq., in Vol.2 of the Tran- 

 sactions of the Ethnological Society of New York. 



t From the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia for Sep- 

 tember and October, 1849. 



