TO RELATIVE CAPACITY OF RACES. 225 



The results -which Professor Jeffreys Wyman arrived at from a 

 careful comparative measurement of the Squier collection, Avere con- 

 firmed bv his subsequent study of that of Professor Agassiz, and 

 may be quoted as applying to both; for he sums up his later investi- 

 gations with the remark : " These results agree with all previous 

 conclusions with regard to the diminutive size of the ancient 

 Peruvian brain."* Of the Squier collection he says: "The average 

 capacity of the fifty-six crania measured agrees veiy closely with 

 that indicated by Morton and Meigs, viz., 1230 centimetres, or 

 75 cub. inches, which is considerably less than that of the barbarous 

 ti-ibes of America, and almost exactly that of the Australians 

 and Hottentots as given by Morton and Meigs, and smaller than 

 that derived from a larger number of measurements by Davis. 

 Thxis we have, in this particular, a race which has established a 

 complex civil and religious polity, and made great progress in the 

 useful and fine arts — as its pottery, textUe fabrics, wrought metals, 

 highways and aqueducts, colossal architectui-al structures and court 

 of almost imperial splendour prove, — on the same level, as regards the 

 quantity of brain, with a race whose social and religious conditions 

 are among the most degraded exhibited by the human race. All 

 this goes to show, and cannot be too much insisted upon, that the 

 relative capacity of the skull is to be considered merely as an anato- 

 tomical and not as a physiological characteristic ; and unless the 

 quality of the brain can be represented at the same time as the 

 quantity, brain measurement cannot be assumed as an indication of 

 the intellectual position of races any more than of individuals."! 



The only definite attempt which Dr. Morton made to solve the 

 difficulty thus presented to us, curiously evades its true point. 

 " Something," he says, " may be attributed to a primitive difierence 

 of stock ; but more, pei'hapSj to the contrasted activity of the two 

 races." Here, however, it is not a case of intellectual activity 

 accompanied by, and seemingly begetting an increased volume of 

 brain ; but only the assumption of greater activity in the small- 

 brained race to account for its triumph over larger-brained barbarous 

 tribes in the attainment of numerous elements of a native-born 

 civilization. The question is, how to account for this intellectual 

 activity, with all its marvellous results, attained by a race with an 



* " Peabody Museum Report, 18T4," p. 10. 

 t "Peabody Museuna Report, 1871," p. 11. 



