1 8 THE VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 



I need not make a longer demonstration of what I have affirmed, 

 that classifications of human groups have been attempted by 

 means of the cerebral cranium, but have not been successful on 

 account of deficiency of method; and that the cranio metrical 

 method, still so undeveloped, has not yetj, nor cannot, give those 

 results while there is an exaggeration of an exact principle, that of 

 expressing numerically facts relating to the cranium. It seems to 

 me, after several years of study, and after having adopted the 

 accepted form of craniometry, for want of a better, that it is time 

 to establish for our use and for the study of the variations of man, 

 a natural method, resembling that which is used in zoology and 

 botany, and of which I laid the foundation about two years ago. 



III. 



The human cranium presents two kinds of variations: the first 

 are those which change their general form and present types differ- 

 ing from each other; the second are those which do not change 

 their typical form. The first have stable characteristics, therefore 

 hereditary, and which passing through many generations remain 

 unaltered and persistent; the second are the variations of the indi- 

 viduals of a type, and, of course, being transitory, do not in any 

 way alter the typical forms ; they are the so-called " individual " 

 variations. 



There is no need of recapitulating the facts which relate to varia- 

 tions in the human cranium, nor of seeking their causes,, since the 

 investigations of Darwin, Wallace and others concerning the 

 variability of organisms, well known to all students of biology. 

 I would simply state that the various phenomena of variation are 

 repeated in man, and, for the case in point, in the human cranium. 



The relation which exists between the two kinds of variations 

 is close, and it is possible to admit that individual variations have 

 given origin to permanent variations, just as it is easy to accept the 

 idea that the process of variation in animals and in man in the 

 cranium and the brain is continuous and constant. However 

 that may be, an observer accustomed to large and small series of 

 human heads perceives immediately that such series may be 

 divided into groups, different and distinct, according to the form 



