778 REPORT— 1901. 



Anthropologist ; and this is all the more imperative seeing that brains of different 

 races are seldom available for investigation, whilst skulls in the different museums 

 may literally be counted by thousands. 



Meantime, however, the Craniologist lies buried beneath a mighty mountain 

 of figures, many of which have little morphological value and possess no true 

 importance in distinguishing the finer differences of racial forms. Let us take as 

 an example the figures upon which the cephaHc or length-breadth index of the skull 

 is based. The measurement of the long diameter of the cranium does not give the 

 true length of the cranial cavity. It includes, in addition, the diameter of an 

 air-chamber of very variable dimensions which is placed in front. The measurement 

 combines in itself therefore two factors of very different import, and the result is 

 thereby vitiated to a greater or less extent in different skulls. A recent memoir 

 by Schwalbe ' affords instructive reading on this matter. One case in point 

 may be given. Measured in the usual way, the Neanderthal skull is placed in the 

 dolichocephalic class ; whereas Schwalbe has shown that if the brain-case alone be 

 considered it is found to be on the verge of brachycephaly. Huxley, many years 

 ago, remarked that ' until it shall become an opprobrium to an ethnological collec- 

 tion to possess a single skull which is not bisected longitudinally ' in order that 

 the true proportions of its different parfs may be properly determined we shall 

 have no ' safe basis for that ethnological craniology which aspires to give the 

 anatomical characters of the crania of the different races of mankind.' It appears 

 to me that the truth of this observation can hardly be disputed, and yet this 

 method of investigation has been adopted by very few Craniologists. 



It has become too much the habit to measure and compare crania as if they 

 were separate and distinct entities and without a due consideration of the evolu- 

 tionary changes througli which both the brain and its bony envelope have passed. 

 Up to the present little or no effort has been made to contrast those parts of the 

 cranial wall or cavity which have been specially modified by the cerebral growth- 

 changes which are peculiar to man. It may be assumed that these changes have 

 not taken place to an equal extent, or indeed followed identically the same lines 

 in all races. 



Unfortunately our present knowledge of cerebral growth and the value to be 

 attached to its various manifestations is not so complete as to enable us to follow 

 out to the full extent investigations planned on these lines. But the areas of cere- 

 bral cortex to which man owes his intellectual superiority are now roughly mapped 

 out, and the time has come when the effect produced upon the cranial form by the 

 marked extension of these areas in the human brain should be noted and the skulls 

 of diflerent races contrasted from this point of view. 



To some this may seem a return to the old doctrine of Phrenology, and to a 

 certain extent it is ; but it would be a Phrenology based upon an entirely new 

 foundation and elaborated out of entirely new material. 



It is to certain of the growth changes in the cerebrum which I believe to be 

 specially characteristic of man, and which unquestionably have had some influence 

 in determining head-forms, that I wish particularly to refer in this Address. 



The surface of the human cerebrum is thrown into a series of tortuous folds or 

 convolutions separated by slits or fissure.-, and both combine to give it an appear- 

 ance of great complexity. These convolutions were long considered to present 

 no definite arrangement, but to be thrown together in the .same meaningless 

 disorder as is exhibited in a dish of macaroni. During the latter half, or rather 

 more, of the century which has just ended it has, however, been shown by the 

 many eminent men who have given their attention to this subject that the pattern 

 which is assumed by the convolutions, while showing many subsidiary difierences, 

 not only in difierent races and diflerent individuals, but also in the two hemispheres 

 of the same person, is yet arranged on a consistent and uniform plan in every 

 human brain, and that any decided deviation from this plan results in an imperfect 

 carrying out of the cerebral function. In unravelling the intricacies of the human 



' SUiclien nier Pitliccanthmpus erectiis (Dubois). Zeitaohrift f. Morj)h. vnd 

 Anthro^., Band i. Heft 1, 1899. 



