IV METHODS AND RESULTS OF ETHNOLOGY 245 



his model exemplar of human skulls, from which 

 all others might be regarded as deviations ; and 

 out of this, by some strange intellectual hocus- 

 pocus, grew up the notion that the Caucasian 

 man is the prototypic "Adamic" man, and his 

 country the primitive centre of our kind. Per- 

 haps the most curious thing of all is, that the 

 said Georgian skull, after all, is not a skull of 

 average form, but distinctly belongs to the 

 brachycephalic group. 



With the third proposition I am quite disposed 

 to agree, though it must be recollected that it is 

 one thing to allow that a given migration is 

 possible, and another to admit there is good 

 reason to believe it has really taken place. 



But I can find no sufficient ground for accepting 

 the fourth proposition ; and I doubt if it would 

 ever have obtained its general currency except for 

 the circumstance that fair Europeans are very 

 readily tanned and embrowned by the sun. Yet 

 I am not aware that there is a particle of proof 

 that the cutaneous change thus effected can be- 

 come hereditary, any more than that the enlarged 

 livers, which plague our countrymen in India, can 

 be transmitted ; while there is very strong 

 evidence to the contrary. Not only, in fact, are 

 there such cases as those of the English families 

 in Barbadoes, who have remained for six genera- 

 tions unaltered in complexion, but which are open 

 to the objection that they may have received 



