EXPRESSION BY MEASUREMENTS. 281 



the ship Novara, devised an elaborate system applicable to tbe whole 

 human figure, "as a diagnostic means for distinguishing the Human 

 Races/' and including thirty-one measurements of the head. By this 

 means they aimed, and as they believed, successfully, at determining 

 a system adapted to the classification of men according to race-differ- 

 ences. But so many difficulties beset the craniometrist, in the uncer- 

 tainty as to determinate points, of uniform occurrence, from which to 

 start in the various measurements; and deviations from any assumed 

 normal arrangement in the direction and relative position of the sutures 

 are so numerous, that : while one class of modern observers still aims at 

 overcoming those sources of error by multiplying the details of mea- 

 surement; the greater number — feeling somewhat as Dr. Adam did, 

 the difficulty of interpreting the results of such minute labour, — incline 

 to fall back mainly on the earlier and sinapler tests of length, breadth, 

 height, circumference, and internal capacity. 



Of the former class, Dr. J. Aitken Meigs merits special recognition. 

 After a careful resume of the labours of his predecessors, he has set 

 forth in "The North American Medico-Chirurgical Review" for Sep- 

 tember, 1861, an elaborated scheme of cranial admeasurements, with 

 minute indications as to the fixed points on which each depends. 

 Including the face, and such special details as the diameters and shape 

 of the foramen magnum, Dr. Meigs' measurements amount in number 

 to forty-eight. Among observers who have limited themselves to the 

 few most notable calliper and tape measurements, Drs. Thurnam and 

 Davis may fitly represent this second class. In their beautifully executed 

 " Crania Britannica" they have only made some slight, though not 

 unimportant additions to those employed by Dr. Morton, in the " Crania 

 Americana :" relying, in part, on the pen for completing the work, by 

 means of descriptive details ; but still more on wood-cuts and full-sized 

 lithographs. The plan of Dr. Spurzheim — like those of Drs. Scherzer, 

 Schwarz and Meigs, — appears to have contemplated an exhaustive 

 metrical system complete in itself. 



But Dr. Adam claimed to have embodied in his labours on the crania 

 of the Catacombs the results of instruction derived from Barclay and 

 Abernethy, as well as from Spurzheim The nomen clature and mea- 

 surementS; therefore, employed by him, under the special direction of 

 the distinguished Parisian lecturer, cannot be wholly devoid of interest 

 to the modern anthropologist, and may furnish suggestions of practical 

 value. They are classified as follows : 

 2 



