290) REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 
with Albanians of Martino, in North-Kast Greece, and others from the 
islands of Hydra and Spetza, I obtained practically identical contours, 
and when these again differed from the bulk of the Cretans. In Crete 
I frequently determined, to his astonishment, the local provenance of 
an individual merely by his contour. Speaking generally two types 
of head contour, strikingly distinct, are iound in the island to-day, one 
associated with dolichocephaly and the other generally with brachy- 
cephaly. This latter type is found most commonly in Sphakia, a region 
naturally isolated, where the people are also less mixed, by reason of 
the custom of endogamy. By tradition and dialect the Sphakiots are 
more Dorian than the rest of the island. These types have connections 
outside of Crete which point north and west, but we stand badly in need 
of head contours for comparison. 
It is obvious, if this method proves so rapid and incisive a criterion 
of race analysis in an island which, when all mean measurements are 
taken into account, is fairly homogeneous, that it might be applied with 
advantage over greater areas, where bigger contrasts are available. 
Further, it may enable us to determine the type or types of the pre- 
historic migrants. It bears testimony to the permanency of head form, 
in that, among others, a Late Minoan skull from Knossos is a type 
well represented among the nineteenth-century skulls at the monastery 
of Arkadhi. The problem of the origin and connections of the blue- 
eyed people of the higher altitudes of the Mediterranean and the greater 
problem of the connection between the short, dark dolichocephal of the 
Mediterranean and the tall, blonde dolichocephal of Northern Europe 
seems to me to await confirmation by this method. I have already 
made a beginning in measuring and contouring 161 foreign troops— 
French, Italian, and Russian—in Canea, but main types throughout 
Europe should in my opinion be contoured without delay. 
The instrument referred to above will be more fully described and 
illustrated later, but a brief description is appended here. 
The first portion, for obtaining the sagittal curve or contour, is a 
simple solder wire (half lead and half tin) one-eighth of an inch in 
diameter, cased in a rubber tube. This is found .to be plastic, yet firm 
enough to withstand alteration in handling and posing. The instrument 
for posing the rubber-cased wire is of aluminium, and consists of two 
legs at right angles braced. These are scaled and pierced with slots, in 
which small square frames work. The frames hold false pencils, also 
scaled, which slide at right angles to the plane of the aluminium frame. 
At the angle, but exteriorly, is a detachable ear-piece, to insert in the 
auditory meatus. 
The base-line adopted is that of the Frankfort agreement, and the 
object of this instrument is to determine the position of the curve in 
relation to this. The wire, having been shaped to the head, is left 
in position, and the instrument is held with the ear-piece in the ear- 
hole, and one leg pointing vertically and the other horizontally in the 
Frankfort base-line. Thus held it is only necessary to chalk the rubber 
where the legs cross it; but, as the legs, held at the side of the head, 
are at a distance from the rubber-cased wire in the median plane of 
the head, the false pencils are pushed through to meet it. The square 
frame and the false pencils can all be set to scale before applying to the 
head if the usual measurements have been already made on the head, 
or merely the breadth, the auricular altitude, and an additional auricular 
