144 Dr Morton's Cranioloyical Collection. 



and slow degrees, it will certainly, in our opinion, prove a 

 hazardous speculation, and one which prudence would seem 

 to counsel them to avoid. Above all, to those who, like the 

 Chinese, in their nutmeg planting in general, cultivate imper- 

 fectly, and, therefore, to a certain extent with less profit, it 

 must in the long run leave anything but a satisfactory re- 

 sult. — (Journal of tlte Indkni Archipelago, vol. iii., No. 1, p. 3.) 



Account of a Craniological Collection, nnth remarks on the 

 Classification of some Families of the Human Face. By Dr 

 Samuel G. Morton.* 



Philadelphia, December 1, 184G. 



My dear Sir, — I have great pleasure in giving you the informa- 

 tion requested in your last letter ; and, in so doing, shall endeavour 

 to be as brief as possible. 



Having had occasion, in the summer of 1830, to deliver an in- 

 troductory lecture to a course of anatomy, I chose for my subject, 

 " The different forms of the skull, as exhibited in the five races of 

 men." Strange to say, I could neither buy nor borrow a cranium 

 of each of these races; and I finished my discourse without shewing 

 either the Mongolian or the Malay. 



Forcibly impressed with this great deficiency in a most important 

 branch of science, I at once resolved to make a collection for myself; 

 and now, after a lapse of sixteen years, I have deposited in the 

 Academy of Natural Sciences a series, embracing upwards of 700 

 human crania, and an equal number of the inferior animals. 



The human skulls are derived from all the five great races, Cau- 

 casian, Mongolian, Malay, American, and Negro, and from many 

 different tribes and nations of each. 



A primary object with me bad been to compare the osteological 

 conformation of our aboriginal tribes with eacli othei', and also with 

 the other races of men ; and, in pursuit of this inquiry, I have ac- 

 cumulated upwards of 400 American crania, pertaining to tribes 

 placed at the remotest geographical distances, and subjected to al- 

 most every vicissitude of climate and locality of which this continent 

 affords examples. I have already, in my Crania Americana, given 

 the result of my observations ; and I shall now repeat them with 

 the greatest possible brevity. 



* The following lett?r from Or Morton is in reply to a request made to him 

 by Mr John K. ISartlet, secretary of the American Ethnological Society, for an 

 account of his craniological collection, with a view to incorporate it in his 

 " Progress of Ethnology.'' It was, however, found to be of so interesting a 

 nature, that the Society determined to present it entire in the second volume 

 of its Transactions. 



