THE HUMAN SKULL 139 



should always strive to eliminate, namely, the 

 personal factor. Professor Thompson admits this 

 in the work from which I quoted a short time 

 ago : " The refinements of some of his (Sergi's) 

 classifications," he says, " are such that it would 

 have been impossible for us to have grouped the 

 [our] specimens without running the risk of, in 

 some instances at least, falling into error." It will 

 be admitted that a system which can only accur- 

 ately be carried out by one man is of little use to 

 the world of science, and in spite of the very in- 

 genious method for geometrically getting over 

 the difficulty which has recently been devised by 

 Dr. Wright, Sergi's system is not at present one 

 which affords much assistance to workers. But I 

 am firmly of opinion that in this direction, and 

 not in that of never-ending indices, lies the hope 

 of craniology in the future. 



The interest of the skull, as we have seen, is 

 mainly due to the fact that it is the receptacle and 

 fortress of the brain, and we may therefore turn 

 for a few moments to a consideration of the re- 

 lations between the two and to certain points 

 which call for mention in connection with this 

 matter. In the first place, it may be pointed out 

 that whilst we have records of a large number of 

 weights of European brains, we have very few, in 

 comparison, of other races. There are records by 

 Topinard of 11,000 brain-weighings amongst 

 adult Europeans, and the next largest series, that 

 of Negroes, only amounts to 190 examples. But 

 we can in some measure get over this difficulty 

 by obtaining the cranial capacity of the skull and 



