103 REPORT — 1870. 



duced to, of adopting one common code of signals, and discarding the exclusive 

 use of their several and distinctive technicalities. Subjects of a imiversal in- 

 terest have thus come to be treated, and that by persons novr amongst us, in a 

 lano-uage imiversally " understanded of the people." I have been careful to include 

 the paleontologist amongst the scientific specialists whose peculiar researches 

 Lave cast a helpful and indeed an indispensable light upon the history of the fates 

 and fortunes of om- species. But it is not organic science only which anthropology 

 impresses into its service ; and it would be the sheerest ingratitude to forget the 

 help which the mineralogist gives us in assigning the source whence the jade celt 

 has come or could come, or to omit an acknowledgment of the toil of the analytical 

 chemist, Avho has given the percentage of the tin in the bronze celt, or in the so- 

 called '' leaden " and therefore Roman coffin. 



I am very well aware that many persons who have honoured me by listening to 

 the last few sentences have been thinking that it is at least premature to attempt 

 to harmonize the two classes of evidence in question ; and that the best advice that 

 can be given to the two set of workers severally is, that they should work inde- 

 pendently of each other. _ Craniography is said, and by irrefragable authorit}^ to 

 be a most deceptive guide'; works and articles on ethnology tell us stories of skulls 

 being labelled, even in museums of the first order of merit, with such Jauus-like 

 tickets as " Etruscan TjtoI or Inca Peruvian ;" and one of the most celebrated 

 anthropotomists of the day has been so impressed with the fact that Peruvian as 

 well as Javanese and Ethiopian skulls may be found on living shoulders within the 

 precincts of a single German university town, that he has busied himself with 

 forming a pseudo-typical ethnological series from the source and area just indi- 

 cated. Great has been the scandal thence accruing to craniography, and the col- 

 lector of skuUs has thence come to be looked upon as a dilettante with singular 

 ghoul-like propensities, which are pardonable only because they relate only to savage 

 races of modern days, or to cemeteries several hundred years old, but which are not 

 to be regarded as "being seriously scientific. Now to me the existence of such a 

 way of estimating such a work appears to argue a sad amount of ignorance of the 

 laws of the logic of practical life, or, indeed, of the chapters on " approximate 

 generalizations," which any man, however unpractical, can read in a treatise on 

 logic. A mans features and physiognomy are instinctively and intuitively, or, if 

 you prefer so to put it, as a result of the accumulated social experiences of gene- 

 rations of men, taken as a more or less valuable and trustworthy indication of his 

 chai-acter ; were this not so, photogi-aphers would not, as I apprehend, and hope 

 they do, make fortunes ; yet the face is at least as often fallacious as an index of 

 the mind as the skull is fallacious as an index of race. The story of the miscon- 

 ception by a physiognomist of the character of Socrates is familiar to us, as I think, 

 from Lempriere's Dictionary ; and it may serve to parallel the story which Blumen- 

 bach and Tilesius tell us of the exact correspondence of the proportions of a skull 

 from Nukahiva with those of the Apollo Belvidere. The living faces in agaol, 

 again, to put the same argument upon other grounds, are as dangerous to judge 

 from as are the skvdls in a museum ; yet every detective is something like a pro- 

 fessor of physiognomy, and most of them could write a good commentary on L.ava- 

 ter. The ti-ue 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 examination 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 hiiman, like other highly organized tyjies of life, admits of great 

 variety; aberrant forms arise, even in our own species, imder conditions of the 

 greatest uniformity possible to humanity : amongst savages great -N-ariety exists 

 (see Bates, * Natm-alist on the Amazons,' ii. p. 129), even though they all of them 

 may live the same ' dxdl 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 pledge one's self 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 ceme- 



