102 REPORT — 1859. 



There are not more than two or three skulls in the entire series which 

 would have suggested, had they been presented to observation without pre- 

 vious knowledge of their country, that they belonged to any primary division 

 of Human kind distinct from that usually characterized by craniologists as 

 Caucasian or Indo-European : the majority might have been obtained from 

 grave-yards in London, Edinburgh, or Dublin, and have indicated a low 

 condition of the Caucasian race. 



Only with regard to the Bhotias, a mountain-race, one of which was 

 marked ' trans nivem,' could the Mongolian type be said to prevail. Where 

 the skulls of any one of the Nepal tribes amount to from 6 to 10 in number, 

 thpy present varieties in the proportion of length and breadth of cranium, in 

 the development of the nasal bones, in the divarication or prominence of the 

 malar bones, in the shape of the forehead, in the degree of prominence of 

 the frontal sinuses, and projection of the supraciliary ridge, which would be 

 found, perhaps, in as many promiscuously collected skulls of the operatives 

 of any of our large manufacturing towns, and which would be associated with 

 corresponding diversities of features and physiognomy. 



As my experience in the characters of human skulls has increased, so has 

 my difficulty of determining therefrom the primary race or variety of 

 mankind. I have examined skulls of white Europeans, showing, as strongly 

 as some of the Nepalese skulls, the flat nose, prognathous jaws, and con- 

 tracted cranium of the Ethiopian. Only with regard to the Australian and 

 Tasmanian aborigines do I feel any confidence of being able to detect, in any 

 single skull, offered without comment to scrutiny, the distinctive characters of 

 a race. The contracted cranium, flat nose, prominent jaws, and more or less 

 protuberant cheek-bones are associated, in the Australo-Tasmanian race, 

 with a peculiarly prominent supraciliary ridge and deep indent between its 

 mid-part and the root of the nose ; and still more peculiar and characteristic 

 is the large proportional size of the teeth, especially of the true molars. 



Upon what, it may be asked, does so close a conformity of character 

 depend, which inspires confidence in the determination of race, by inspection 

 of any single skull of the aborigines of the vast Australian continent, and ad- 

 jacent islands ? It is probable that it depends on the degree of uniformity of 

 the manner of life and the few and simple wants of those aborigines. The 

 food, the mode of obtaining it, the bodily actions, muscular exertions, and 

 mental efforts stimulating and guiding such actions, vary but little in the dif- 

 ferent individuals. The prevailing simple and low social state, the concomi- 

 tant sameness and contracted range of ideas — in short, the small extent of 

 variety in the whole series of living phenomena from the cradle to the grave of 

 a human family of that grade, govern, as it seems to me, the conformity of 

 the cranial organization. 



In the woolly-haired Negroes of Africa there is greater range of variety of 

 cranial organization, concomitant with a greater range of variety in their 

 modes of life and physical development. I believe it would be rash to pro- 

 nounce on the Negro nature of any single skull, save of some of the lowest 

 races of the west coast of Africa; because I have observed, previous to the 

 present craniological comparison, that the assigned characters of the ^Ethio- 

 pian cranium occasionally occur as fully developed in certain low individuals 

 of other races; the subjects of the present Report afford similar instances. 

 This experience has led to the inference that, in the ratio of the complexity 

 of the social system, and of the diversity in the modes of sustaining life and 

 spending it, is the range of diversity of feature and of cranial organization. 



It is probable, therefore, from the effects of civilization and social progress 

 in other varieties or families of mankind, that were the seeds of such progress 



