LECTURES. 



PHYSICAL ETHNOLOGY. 



By DANIEL WILSON, LL.D., 



PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND ENGLISH LITERATURE IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, TORONTO, 



UPPER CANADA. 



PAKT I. 



THE AMERICAN CRANIAL TYPE. 



Among the novel questions to wliicli the progress of science has given promi- 

 nence, nutler aspects undreamt of in very recent years, is that of the relation 

 of man to the inferior orders of being, and his true place in nature as one of the 

 animal creation. In this respect, the investigations of the craniologist, and tjie 

 whole hearings of physical ethnology, are now acquiring an kiterest and import- 

 ance very partially accorded to them before. The geologist, who long ignored 

 all that related to man and his works, as recent, and therefore without the pale 

 of his comprehensive researches, now recognizes both his remains and his works 

 of art as pertaining to the department of palaeontology ; and disputes with the 

 archreologist the appropriation of tlie primitive flint-implements of the drift, once 

 claimed exclusively by l»:m for his Age of Stone. This has materially affected 

 the aspects of the study of physical ethnology ; for until very recently the dif- 

 ferences between man and all other animals have been assumed to be so clearly 

 defined, that the naturalist was long induced to overlook those which distinguish 

 different races of men, and to regard any diversities of structure or relative pro- 

 portions in the human form as mere variations from one common or ideal type. 

 Nevertlieless the craniologist, at the very commencement of his investigations, 

 is led to recognize certain essential varieties of form; tliough still tempted, like 

 Blumenbach, to refer all lliese to some " Caucasian" or other assumed highest 

 type. Before, however, the ethnologist directed his attention to such researches, 

 the artist had sought this type in the beautiful realizations of Greek sculpture ; 

 and by such means he determined the long-accepted statuary scale of the human 

 head and figure. Nor can the influence of this artistic ideal be overlooked iu 

 the direction it gave to some of the speculations of the craniologist, and to the 

 theoretical conception of the fully-developed man. It guided Camper in assign- 

 in«- the laws of his facial angle ; controlled Blumenbach in his determination of 

 the cranial peculiarities of leading races of men ; and even influenced Prichard 

 in his definition of the symmetrical or oval form of skull which he ascribed to 

 his first division. Against the ideal canons of an antique statuary scale, how- 

 ever, some of the greatest modern masters protested ; foremost of whom was 

 Leonardo da Yinci, of whom Bossi remarks, " He thought but little of any 

 general measure of the species. The true proportion aclmitted by him, and 

 acknowledged to be of difficult investigation, is solely the proportion of an indi- 

 vidual in regard to himself, which, according to true imitation, should be difter- 

 ent iu all the individuals of a species, as is the casein nature." In the features 



