I] 



INTRODUCTION 



Daubenton (1764), a colleague of Buffon, is to be credited with the first 

 strictly scientific memoir in which the comparative anatomy of the skull was 

 studied by means of angular measurements. 



Camper's great work was first published in 1770. Born at Leyden in 1722, 

 Camper had attained the age of sixty-seven when he died. But for the work 

 of Tyson, that of Camper would hold the place of honour as anticipating the 

 soundest and most productive methods cf modern physical anthropology. 

 Camper's researches dealt with the comparative anatomy of the Orang-utan 

 (a chapter being devoted specially to its comparison with Man), with the 



Fig. 2. Drawings of the head and skull of a young Orang-utan, and of a negro, 

 to shew the method of determining the facial angle of Camper (cf. Chap. xi). From 

 Camper's original memoir. 



different varieties of anthropoid apes, with the organs of speech in the 

 Orang-utan, with the significance and origin of pigmentation in the negro 

 races, and finally with the comparative study of skulls. In this connection, 

 special reference is due to the method employed, for it was based on the 

 principle of projections, i.e. the comparison of forms and contours drawn in 

 rectilinear projection. Errors due to perspective, such as occur when the 

 object is viewed in the ordinary way, were thus eliminated. In the same 

 treatise, Camper defines and explains the use of the facial angle (cf. Fig. 2) 



1—2 



