re ee ee LS PL 
— ae” 
_— 
’ 
a ee ee ee ee 
—— 
'(Mémoire sur les Plis cérébraux, p. 93). 
~ one or other of them fails to impinge upon the goal. 
that by certain lines of investigation light is thrown upon a 
Sept. 29, 1870] 
write a good commentary on Lavater. The true state of the 
case may, perhaps, be represented thus :—A person who has 
had a large series of crania through his hands, of the authenticity 
of which, as to place and data, he has himself had evidence, 
might express himself, perhaps, somewhat to the following 
effect if he were asked whether he had gathered from his exami- 
nation of such a series any confidence as to his power of 
referring to, or excluding from, any such series, any skull which 
he had not seen before. He might say, ‘“‘the human, like other 
highly-organised types of life, admits of great variety, aberrant 
forms arise, even in our own species, under conditions of the 
greatest uniformity possible to humanity; amongst savages 
great variety exists (see Bates, ‘ Naturalist on the Amazons,’ 
iil. p. 129), even though they all of them may live the same 
“dull grey life,’ and die the same ‘apathetic end ;’ and conse- 
quently it may never, except in the case of Australian or 
Esquimaux, and perhaps a few other crania, be quite safe to 
piedge oneself as to the nationality of a single skull. Still there 
is such a thing as craniographical type, and if half-a-dozen sets, 
consisting of ten crania apiece, each assortment having been 
taken from the cemeteries of some well-marked nationality, were 
set before me, I would venture to say, after consultation and 
comparison, especially with such assistance as that which an 
assembly such as this might furnish me with, that it might be 
possible to show that unassisted cranioscopy, if not invariably 
right, even under such favourable circumstances, was nevertheless 
not wrong in a very large number of cases.”’_ If it is true on the 
one hand that iz generalibus datet error, it is true on the other 
that security is given us by the examination of large numbers for 
the accuracy and reliability of our averages, a principle which, 
Gratiolet informs us, is thoroughly recognised in Chinese meta- 
physics, and which he has formulated in the following words :— 
**Linvariabilité dans le milieu s’applique 4 tout. La verité 
nest point dans un seul fait mais dans tous les faits; elle est 
dans les moyennes, cest-a-dire dans une suite d’obstructions 
formalées aprés le plus grand nombre d’observations possibles.” 
The natural history 
sciences do not usually admit of the strictness which says that an 
exception, so far from proving a rule, proves it to be a bad one; 
rather are we wise in saying that in them at least the universality 
of assertion is in an inverse ratio to that of knowledge, and that 
the sweeping statements dear, as Aristotle long ago remarked 
(Rhetoric, ii. 21. 9 & 10. ; ii, 22. 1.), to a class which he con- 
trasts with the educated, are abhorrent to the mind of organic 
nature. It is true enough, as is sometimes said, that when 
opinions and assertions are always hooped in by qualifications, 
the style becomes embarrassed, and the meaning occasionally 
hard to be understood ; but this difficulty is one which lies in 
the very nature of the case, and the real excellence of style does 
not consist in its lulling the attention and relieving the memory 
by throwing an alliterative ring on to the ear, but in the fur- 
nishing a closely fitting dress to thought, and an accurate 
representation of actual fact. 
If we are told that the attempt to harmonise the results, not 
merely of cranioscopy, but of any and all natural science inves- 
tigation, with the results of literary and linguistic research, is 
needless and even futile, this is simply equivalent to saying that 
one or other of these methods is worthless. For as Truthis one, 
if two routes, purporting both alike to lead to it, do not sooner 
or later converge and harmonise, this can only be because 
It is true 
problem, but at a single point, and that all further prosecution 
of investigation along that line will but lead us off at a tangent. 
Still the throwing of even a single ray upona dark surface is an 
achievement with a value of its own ; and it isa cardinal rulein 
our sciences never to ignore the existence of seemingly contra- 
dictory data, in whatsoever quarter they may show themselves. 
For what would be said of an investigator of a subject such as 
physical geography, who should declare that he would pay no 
attention but to a singie set of data, when he was discussing 
whether a particular archipelago had been formed by upheaval, 
or should be held to be the fragments and remnants of a dis- 
rupted continent ; and that if geological evidence was in crying 
discord with his interpretation of the facts of the distribution of 
species, it was not his business to reconcile them. He would 
~ be held to have neglected his business, as you may see by a 
reference to Mr. Bentham’s Address to the Linnean Society, 
May, 24, 1869. (Linn. Soc. Proc. for 1869, p. xcii.*) 
* The following references to passages of the kind referred to above as to 
the unreliability of craniographical evidence may be useful :—Geographisches 
NATURE 
443 
The argument from identity of customs and practices to 
identity of race is liable to much the same objections and to 
much the same fallacies as is the argument from identity of 
cranial conformation. The case may be found admirably stated 
in Mr. Tylor’s work on the ‘Early History of Mankind,” 
p- 276, ed. 2, and I] may say that the means of bringing the 
problem home to oneself may be found by a visit to any col- 
lection of flint implements. In such a collection as Mr. Tylor 
has pointed out, p. 205, we are very soon impressed with the 
marked uniformity which characterises these implements, 
whether modern or thousands of years old, whether found on 
this side of the world or the other. For example, a flint 
arrowhead which came into my hands a short time back, through 
the kindness of Lord Antrim, after having done duty in these 
iron times as a charm at the bottom of a water-tub for cattle in 
Ireland, was pointed out or at to me by a very distinguished 
Canadian naturalist, who was visiting Oxford the other day, 
as being closely similar to the weapons manufactured by 
the Canadian Indians. Now after such an experience one 
may do well to ask in Mr. Tylor’s words (‘‘ Early History,” 
p- 206) :— 
“How, then, is this remarkable uniformity to be explained ? 
The principle that man does the same thing under the same 
circumstances will account for much, but it is very doubtful 
whether it can be stretched far enough to account for even the 
greater proportion of the facts in question. The other side of 
theargumentis, of course, that resemblance is due to connection, 
and the truth is made up of the two, though in what propor- 
tions we do not know. It may be that, though the problem is 
too obscure to be worked ont alone, the uniformity of develop- 
ment in different regions of the Stone age, may some day be suc- 
cessfully brought in with other lines of argument, based on deep- 
lying agreements in culture which tend to centralise the early 
history of races of very unlike appearances, and living in widely 
distant ages and countries.” 
If the psychological identity of our species may explain the 
identity of certain customs, its physiological identity may explain 
certain others. Some of this latter class are of a curious kind, 
and relate not to matters of social or family, but to matters of 
purely personal and individual interest, concerning as they do the 
sensibility, and with it, all the other functions of the living body. 
Such customs are the wearing of labrets, or lip-rings, nose-rings, 
and if I may add it without offence, of certain other rings, in- 
serted in the wide region supplied by the fi‘th or tri-facial nerve. 
A physiological explanation may lie at the base of these practices, 
which appear to put at the disposal of the persons who adopt them 
a perennial means for setting up an irritation, whence refex 
consequences in the course of reflex nutrition and reflex secretion, 
as of gastric juice, may flow. A curious book was written, orat 
least published, on the subject of these practices, and others 
akin to them, in 1653, by Dr. John Bulwer, a benevolent doctor, 
who paid attention to the care of the deaf and dumb previously, 
I think it is stated, to Dr. Wallis, and who consequently, with 
proper pride, if this precedence really belongs to him, signs him- 
self ‘‘J. B. cognomento Chirosophus.” The title of the book is 
«* Anthropometemorphosis ; Man Transformed, or the Artificial 
Changeling.” I was made acquainted with its existence by my 
friend, Mr. Tomlinson, of Worcester College, from the library ~ 
of which Society I procured a copy for consultation ; the book is 
not rare I think ; but I think it is little known, it contains much 
that is curious, and it is, inasmuch as it was written more than 200 
years ago, Or akipatos iv rt Aciuwy, from some, though not from 
all points of view, the more valuable. It is, lapprehend, to some of 
these customs.as wellasto others, that Zimmerman—not the author 
ofthe work on Solitude, but Zimmerman the zoologist—alludes in 
a rather amusing passage, which may be found in the third volume 
of his larger work on the Distribution of Species, and on 
Zovlogy (see p. 257). I speak of the passage as amusing, it is 
more than that, or I would not quote it ; indeed you will not see 
that it is particularly amusing unless I tell you that volumes ii. 
and iii. are of date 1783, and are dedicated to his own father, 
whiist volume i, of date 1778, is dedicated to ‘‘ His Most 
Serene Highness and Lord, Ferdinand Duke of Brunswick, my 
Most Gracious Lord.” Its quality of amusingness depends upon 
these dates, and the speculations they set us to make as to how 
the Duke had offended the man of science in the interval between 
1778 and 1783. It may bea warming to Serene Dukes how they 
Jahrbuch, 1866, p. 481. Hyrtl, Topograph. Anatomie, i. p. 13, Henle, 
System, Anat. i198. Krause, Archiv fiir Anthropologie, ii. 1. Holder, 
ibid. See also His and Riitimeyer, and Eckers in their systematic works 
severally, the Crania Helvetica, and the Crania Germaniz meridionalis. 
