46 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [N.S., XVI, 
tained an attitude that could hardly have been maintained 
except by a man who had at one time undergone a military 
line on a reduced scale (fig. 1). 
These difficulties are all inherent in the measurement of 
living persons. They can be to a considerable extent elimin- 
ated in dealing with the prepared skeleton. Even here, however, 
a difficulty, perhaps of greater fundamental importance, per- 
sists. I mean the fact that in most of our measurements we 
are attempting to estimate a curve, often complex, by measur- 
ing a straight line or an angle. Straight lines and true angles 
are not to be found in the human body, but these are what our 
measurements from point to point provide for us. You know 
the Urdu proverb, “‘ Camel, Oh Camel, is there anything straight 
in your anatomy ? can think of no animal, human or other- 
wise, to which this is not applicable in a literal sense. Were our 
measurements sufficiently numerous they would form a pos- 
sible basis for reconstructing curved outlines, but it would be 
impossible to select sufficiently numerous definite points at 
which to take them on any limb or other part of the body. 
Our system may, indeed, be compared to that of the Cubists in 
art. It is for this reason that the recent work of Berry and 
Robertson in Australia,! and particularly their tracings of 
crania, has taught us more about the origin of the Australian 
and Tasmanian races than all the measurements of living per- 
sons or of skulls and skeletons hitherto published. Tracings 
show contours in a way no measurement can do: the indices 
derived from measurements are merely a concise and conveni- 
ent method of expressing certain proportions of a much simpler 
ind. 
lf this be true of crania, it is still more true of the living 
body, in which, as we all know if we think the matter out, 
racial peculiarities are not exclusively skeletal. : 
_, Take this photograph (fig. 2) of the head and bust of a 
Uriya fisherman from the north-east of the Ganjam district, a 
man probably near the aboriginal racial type of Peninsular 
India. Note the low receding forehead, the prominent bony 
eyebrows, the coarse outlines of the nose, the patent nostrils, 
! Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinbur 
: ? gh, Vol. XXXI (1910), 
a Princ of the Royal Society of Victoria, Vol, V (1909), and Vol VI 
