876 REPORT—1899. 
5. Notes on a Collection of 1,000 Egyptian Crania. 
By Professor A. MacatistEr, £.R.S. 
6. On a Pre-basi-occipital Bone in a New Hebridean Skull, and an 
anomalous Atlanto-occipital Joint in a Moriori. By Professor A. 
Macatister, /.R.S. 
7. Notes on Colour Selection in Man. By Dr. J. Benvos, F.R.S. 
The author notes the prevalence of light colours of eyes and hair in those who 
follow occupations which have to do with animals, eg. butchers, grooms, and 
carters, and the opposite in some sedentary occupations ; and seeks an explanation. 
8. Report on the Lake Village of Glastonbury. See Reports, p. 594. 
9. Sequences of Prehistoric Remains. 
By Professor W. M. Furnpers Perris. 
In written history the value of chronology lies almost entirely in its defining the 
Sequence of events; and if the order of changes in a civilisation can be fixed, the 
reference to a scale of years is but a secondary matter. 
Hitherto, only very vague and general terms, covering large periods, have been 
used in naming prehistoric remains ; and those terms referring to places and not to 
age. The very incomplete records of discoveries make such terms the best that can 
be usually attained. 
But if we possessed a perfect record of an unlimited number of contemporary 
grcups of objects (as from tombs), all of which objects have had a time of 
invention, popularity, and decay, and in use overlapped each other, it is clear 
that with patience it would be possible to arrange all the series of groups in their 
order of time, and so establish definite sequences among the varions objects. Such 
a task would be like that of reconstructing the order of an alphabet from torn-up 
fragments which contained only two or three letters each, or settling the sequence 
of scattered geological beds from the remains found in each. 
If then a sequence can be established, a scale of notation is needed. Asa scale 
of years is impossible, a scale of equal activities is the most reasonable. This may 
be reached by placing all the available material in order (from tombs, houses, &c.) 
and then dividing it into a scale of equal parts. Such a scale, though not equal in 
time, will yet give a fair unit for measuring a civilisation. 
From the records of the excavations that my party have made in Egypt, we 
lave the contents of some thousands of prehistoric tombs exactly known. Every 
type of vase, of stone or pottery, is defined in a corpus containing over a thousand 
forms, so that merely a letter anda number defines precisely what was found. 
Thus, all the complexity of variations can be dealt with rigorously in a workable 
condition. 
The practical process for dealing with this material is by writing out the con- 
tents of each grave on one slip of card; and then sorting the cards into such order 
that there shall be the minimum dispersion of each type number. 
The methods of sorting the cards into the original order of the graves (as nearly 
as possible), depend on various principles. 
1. Any certain superposition of graves, one later than another, 
2. Any clear and unquestionable series of changes of form or of manufacture, 
(These two principles serve to fix the order of our scale, whether going forward or 
backward in time.) 
3. Statistical methods; sorting graves by the relative proportions of types in 
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