Crania of Aboriginal Americans, 137 



others, not excepting the Mongolians ; nor do the feeble ana- 

 logies of language, and the more obvious ones, in civil and 

 religious institutions and the arts, denote any thing beyond 

 casual or colonial communication with the Asiatic nations ; 

 and even those analogies may perhaps be accounted for, as 

 Humboldt has suggested, in the mere coincidence arising from 

 similar wants and impulses in nations inhabiting similar lati- 

 tudes. 



" 2d, That the American nations, excepting the polar tribes, 

 are of one race and one species, but of two great families, 

 which resemble each other in physical, but differ in intellec- 

 tual character. 



'* 3d, That the cranial remains discovered in the mounds 

 from Peru to Wisconsin, belong to the same race, and proba- 

 bly to the Toltecan family." Dr Morton subjoins the follow- 

 ing 



"Note on the internal capacity of the cranium in the differ- 

 ent races of men. Having subjected the skulls in my posses- 

 sion, and such also as I could obtain from my friends, to the 

 internal capacity measurement already described, I have ob- 

 tained the following results. The mean of the American race 

 (omitting fractions) is repeated here, merely to complete the 

 table. The skulls of idiots, and persons under age, were of 

 course rejected. 



'* 1st. The Caucasians were, with a single exception, de-. 

 rived from the lowest and least educated class of society. It 

 is proper, however, to mention that but three Hindoos are ad- 

 mitted in the whole number, because the skulls of these peo- 

 ple are probably smaller than those of any other existing na- 

 tion. For example, seventeen Hindoo heads give a mean 

 of but seventy-five cubic inches ; and the three received into 

 the table are taken at that average. To be more specific, we 



