890 ADDRESS ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 



and selects from it one or more which correspond to one of the 

 great types based by Retzius not merely upon consideration of pro- 

 portionate lengths and breadths, but also upon the artistic con- 

 siderations of type, curve, and contour. He measures the skulls 

 thus selected, and so furnishes himself with a check which even 

 the most practised eye cannot safely dispense with. He then pro- 

 ceeds to satisfy himself as to whether the entire series is referable 

 to one alone of the two great typical forms of Brachycephaly or 

 Dolichocephaly, or whether both types are represented in it, and if 

 so, in what proportions and with what admixture of intermediate 

 forms. With a number of Peruvian, or, indeed, of Western 

 American skulls generally, of Australian, of Tasmanian, of Eskimo, 

 of Veddah, of Andamanese crania before him, the craniographer 

 would nearly always, setting aside a few abnormally aberrant 

 (which are frequently morbid) specimens, refer them all to one 

 single type ^. 



Matters would be very different when the craniographer came to 

 deal with a mixed race like our own, or like the population of 

 Switzerland, the investigation into the craniology of which has 

 resulted in the production of the invaluable ' Crania Helvetica ' of 

 His and Riitimeyer. At once, upon the first inspection of a series of 

 crania, or, indeed, of heads, from such a race, it is evident that some 

 are referable to one, some to another, of one, two, or three typical 

 forms, and that a residue remains whose existence and character 

 is perhaps explained and expressed by calling them ' Mischformen.' 

 Then arises a most interesting question — Has the result of inter- 

 crossing been such as to give a preponderance to these ' Misch- 

 formen?' or has it not rather been such as in the ultimate resort, 

 whilst still testified to by the presence of intermediating and inter- 

 connecting links, to have left the originally distinct forms still in 



1 It is not by any means entirely correct to say that there is no variety observable 

 among races living in isolated savage purity. The good people of Baden who, when 

 they first saw them, said all the Bashkirs in a regiment brought up to the Rhine in 

 1813 by the Russians were as like to each other as twins, found, in the course of a 

 few weeks, that they could distinguish them readily and sharply enough (see Ecker, 

 'Crania Germaniae Occid.' p. 2 ; ' Archiv fiir Anthrop.' v. p. 485, 1872). And real 

 naturalists, such as Mr. Bates, practised in the discrimination of zoological differences, 

 express themselves as struck rather with the amount of unlikeness than with that of 

 likeness which prevails amongst savage tribes of the greatest simplicity of life and the 

 most entire freedom from crossing with other races. But these observations relate to 

 the living heads, not to the skulls. 



