App. I. CONDITIONS OF VAEIABILITY. 459 



that the skull of a Chief, No, 542, "is in many 

 respects like the German heads in the collection, 

 especially those from Tiibingen, Frankfort, Berlin : 

 it has the Swedish occiput" (ib.). "No. 1055 ap- 

 proaches the angular Gothic form" {ih.). In others 

 " the outline of the crown forms a more or less 

 rounded oval" (ih.). "No. lOG approaches the 

 arched type." " The specimens in the collection 

 constituting the Seminole group vary not a little 

 from each other" (p. 25). After descriptive details, 

 Dr. Meigs proceeds : " It vrill thus be seen that in 

 this group there are at least two, if not three, distinct 

 types" (p. 26). 



How often one feels the desire to ask an author 

 the meaning in which he uses the word " type " ! As 

 applied to cranial configuration, the grades or shades 

 of transition are such that the choice of any one step 

 in the series for a term of comparison must he arbi- 

 trary. 



With regard to the aborigines of America, the 

 ethnologist may classify them according to their 

 tribes, family names, or autonomy, or according to 

 the districts inhabited by them, or according to their 

 cranial characters. But, it is abundantly sliown by 

 Dr. Meigs, as, indeed, Avas to be inferred from the 

 'Crania Americana' of Moreton, that, Avith the arbi- 

 trary assiunption of certain proportions, dimensions, 

 &c., as "type-characters," the cranial classification 

 would differ from the tribal or national, geographical 

 or epochal one. 



AVhat constitutes the prevalent "dolichocephalic 

 type," ethnologically speaking, among the African 



