172 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. XVIII. No. 451 



The most favorite classification, however, has always been that 

 according to the skulls. The skull, as the shell of the brain, has 

 by many students been supposed to betray something of the spir- 

 itual essence of man ; and who can doubt that the general features 

 of the skull, if taken in large averages, do correspond to the gen- 

 eral features of human character ? We have only to look round 

 to see men with heads like a cannon-ball and others with heads 

 like a hawk. This distinction has formed the foundation for a 

 more scientific classification into brachycephalic, dolichocephalic, 

 and mesocephalic skulls. The proportion of 80:100 between the 

 transverse and longitudinal diameter gives us the ordinary or meso- 

 cephalic type, the proportion of 75 : 100 the dolichocephalic, the 

 proportion of 85: 100 the brachycephalic type. The extremes are 

 70: 100 and 90: 100. 



If we examine any large collection of skulls, we have not much 

 difficulty in arranging them undar these classes; but if, after we 

 have done this, we look at the nationality of each skull, we find 

 the most hopeless confusion. Pruner Bey, as Peschel tells us in 

 his ■' Volkerkunde," has observed brachycephalic and dolicho- 

 cephalic skulls in children born of the same mother; and if we 

 consider how- many women have been carried away into captivity 

 by Mongolians in their inroads into China, India, and Germany, 

 we cannot feel surprised if we find some longheads among the 

 roundheads of those Central Asiatic hordes. Only we must not 

 adopt the easy expedient of certain anthropologists who, when 

 they find dolichocephalic and brachycephalic skulls in the same 

 tomb, at once jump to the conclusion that they must have be- 

 longed to two different races. When, for instance, two dolicho- 

 cephalic and three brachycephalic skulls were discovered in the 

 same tomb at Alexanderpol, we were told at once that this proved 

 nothing as to the simultaneous occurrence of different skulls in 

 the same family : nay, that it proved the very contrary of what 

 it might seem to prove. It was clear, we were assured, that the 

 two dolichocephalic skulls belonged to Aryan chiefs and the three 

 brachycephalic skulls to their non-Aryan slaves, who were 

 killed and buried with their masters, according to a custom well 

 known to Herodotus. This sounds very learned, but is it really 

 quite straightforward ? 



Besides the general division of skulls into dolichocephalic, 

 brachycephalic, and mesocephalic, other divisions have been un- 

 dertaken, according to the height of the skull, and, again, accord- 

 ing to the maxillary and the facial angles. This latter division 

 gives us orthognathic, prognathic, and mescgnathic skulls. 



Lastly, according to the peculiar character of the hair, we may 

 distinguish two great divisions, the people with woolly hair (TJlo- 

 triches) and people with smooth hair (Lissotriches). The former 

 are subdivided into Lophocomi, people with tufts of hair, and 

 Eriocomi, people with fleecy hair. The latter are divided into 

 Euthycomi, straight- haired, and Euplocomi (not Euplocomic, 

 wavy-haired, as Brinton gives it), wavy-haired. It has been shown 

 that these peculiarities of the hair depend on the peculiar form of 

 the hair-tubes, which, in cross-sections, are found to be either 

 round or elongated in different ways. 



Now all these classifications, to which several more might be 

 added, those according to the orbits of the eyes, the outlines of 

 the nose, the width of the pelvis, are by themselves extremely 

 useful. But few of them only, if any, run strictly parallel. It 

 has been said that all dolichocephalic races are prognathic, and 

 have woolly hair. I doubt whether this is true without excep- 

 tion; but, even if it were, it would not allow us to draw any gen- 

 ealogical conclusions from it, because there are certainly many 

 dolichocephalic people who are not woolly-haired, as, for instance, 

 the Eskimos (Brinton's " Races and Peoples," p. 249J. 



Now, let us consider whether there can be any organic connec- 

 tion between the shape of the skull, tlie facial angle, the confor- 

 mation of the hair, or the color of the skin, on one side, and what 

 ■we call the great families of language on the other. That we 

 speak at all may rightly be called a work of nature, opera natu- 

 rale, as Dante said long ago ; but that we speak thus or thus, cosi 

 cosi, that, as the same Dante said, depends on our pleasure — 

 that is our work. To imagine, therefore, that as a matter of ne- 

 cessity, or as a matter of fact, dolichocephalic skulls have any- 

 thing to do with Aryan, mesocephalic with Semitic, or brachy- 



cephalic with Turanian speech, is nothing but the wildest random 

 thought; it can convey no rational meaning whatever. We might 

 as well say that all painters are dolichocephalic, and all musicians 

 brachycephalic, or that all lophocomic tribes work in gold, and all 

 lissocomic tribes in silver. 



If anything must be ascribed to prehistoric times, surely the 

 differentiation of the human skull, the human hair, and the hu- 

 man skin, would have to be ascribed to that distant period. No 

 one, I believe, has ever maintained that a mesocephalic skull was 

 split or differentiated into a dolichocephalic and a brachycephalic 

 variety in the bright sunshine of history. 



But let us, for the sake of argument, assume that in prehistoric 

 times all dolichocephalic people spoke Aryan, all mesocephalic, 

 Semitic, all brachycephalic, Turanian languages ; how would that 

 help us ? 



So long as we know anything of the ancient Aryan, Semitic, and 

 Turanian languages, we find foreign words in each of them. This 

 proves a very close and historical contact between them. For in- 

 stance, in Babylonian texts of 3000 B. c. there is the word sindhu. 

 for cloth made of vegetable fibres, linen. That can only be the' 

 Sanscrit sindhu, the Indus, or saindhava, what comes from the 

 Indus. It would be the same word as the Homeric aiv6isv, fine- 

 cloth (' ' Physical Religion, " p. 87) . In Egyptian we find so many 

 Semitic words that it is difficult to say whether they were bor- 

 rowed or derived from a common source. I confess I am not 

 convinced, but Egyptologists of high authority assure us that the- 

 names of several Aryan peoples, such as the Sicilians, and Sardin- 

 ians, occur in the fourteenth century B.C., in the inscriptions of 

 the time of Menephthah I. Again, as soon as we know anything 

 of the Turanian languages — Finnish, for instance — we find them, 

 full of Aryan words. All this, it may be said, applies to a very 

 recent period in the ancient history of humanity. Still, we have 

 no access to earlier documents, and we may fairly say that this- 

 close contact which existed then existed, probably, at an earlier 

 time also. 



If, then, we have no reason to doubt that the ancestors of the- 

 people speaking Aryan, Semitic, and Turanian languages, lived in 

 close proximity, would there not have been marriages between, 

 them so long as they lived in peace, and would they not have 

 killed the men and carried off the women in time of war ? What, 

 then, would have been the effect of a marriage between a doli- 

 chocephalic mother and a brachycephalic father? The materials- 

 for studying this question of metissage, as the French call it, are 

 too scanty as yet to enable us to speak with confidence. But 

 whether the paternal or maternal type prevailed, or whether their 

 union gave rise to a new permanent variety, still it stands to rea- 

 son that the children of a dolichocephalic captive woman might be 

 found, after fifty or sixty years, speaking the language of the- 

 brachycephalic conquerors. 



(To be continued.) 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



From an experiment reported in Bulletin No. 35 of the Ken- 

 tucky Experiment Station, which is located in the heart of the 

 Blue Grass region at Lexington, it appears that the results are the 

 same as they have been for the last two seasons, that fertilizers, 

 whether used in combination or singly, have no effect upon the 

 yield of wheat. On the same lands, for corn, potatoes, hemp, and 

 tobacco, the results of potash fertilizers show very favorably. 



— Sr. H. Morize, astronomer at the observatory of Rio de 

 Janeiro, has just published a " Sketch of the Climatology of Bra- 

 zil," which will be welcome to meteorologists, as hitherto system- 

 atic observations have only been published for a very few points, 

 of that immense country, covering 39 degrees of latitude. The 

 sketch has been drawn up mainly from the observations of travel- 

 lers and private observers. Nature extracts a few brief notes 

 from the sketch, as follows. Thunder-storms are very frequent 

 aU along the coast, and are mostly harmless; regular cyclones are 

 very rare. The most dangerous winds are the pamperos, which 

 blow from the south-west, and have been fully described by the 

 late Admiral Fitz-Roy, and a still more rare and dangerous wind 

 which blows from the south-east. As regards temperature, the- 



