486 NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN. 



these races, the figure of the skull has formed a principal 

 feature ; the differences in this structure (so important from 

 the organ it encloses) being such as are obvious to the most 

 careless observer. The early researches of Camper and 

 Blumenbach on this subject have been much extended since 

 their time. The collections of Ketzius of Stockholm, and of 

 Warren and Morton in the United States, well known to us 

 by personal inspection, have much augmented our acquain- 

 tance with the crania of different races over the globe. 

 These new acquisitions have often proved important in 

 furnishing links between cranial forms widely dissociated 

 before : they have shown nothing which can be construed 

 into a diversity of species. Nevertheless the varieties of 

 crania are strongly enough marked to justify a division 

 founded on this character, though naturalists have not 

 hitherto agreed in that which should be adopted. The one 

 originally proposed by Blumenbach included five races 

 the Caucasian, Ethiopian, Mongolian, Malayan, and American 

 and this with little modification was long acquiesced in. 

 The later researches of Dr. Prichard, founded on more ample 

 materials, led him to reduce the chief types of cranial form, 

 and the distinction of races founded upon them, to three 

 only. These he characterises from their several peculiarities, 

 as the prognathous, the pyramidal, and the oval or ellipti- 

 cal. The prognathous, or that marked by the predominance 

 of the jaws, is the cranial type of the lower Negro and 

 Australian races; the pyramidal crania, connected with 

 broad, lozenge-formed faces, furnish a type common to the 

 Mongolian or Tartar nations, the Laplanders, Esquimaux, 

 Hottentots, and many American tribes ; the oval or ellip- 

 tical cranium expresses the form common to the Caucasian 

 races and all the more highly civilised nations of the world. 

 While acquiescing in this division, we do so simply from 

 its being the one most natural and comprehensive, where 



