SYSTEM. 137 



line from the incisors to the extreme protuberance of the 

 occipital region. The relation of the two determinated divisions 

 in this line by its intersection with the first, will give the 

 statistics of comparison.* 



Progress has been immense, and yet our systems remain 

 very unsatisfactory ; the skull seems to escape every method 

 of measurement. Some time ago a meeting of craniologists 

 took place at Gottingen, and yet the learned assembly was 

 obliged to separate without settling any thing, f It seems that 

 the old saying of Bernard Palissy about measuring some 

 peculiar skull, will remain true in spite of all our efforts : " I 

 have never known how to obtain a correct measurement. "J 

 Another method is that of Morton, to which he has attached 

 his name by the multiplicity of facts which he has drawn 

 from it, by the justice of the views which he has expressed, 

 after having used it thousands of times ; we speak of the direct 

 measurement of the interior capacity of the skull. It is for 

 ever to be regretted that Morton finished his laborious career 

 without having been able to publish the ultimate results of his 

 long researches ; but this method (which M. Broca has 

 actively applied), is, however, not quite perfect. If there was 

 merely a difference among the different races in the amount of 



* Compare Crull, Dissertatio de Cranio, p. 52. 



f Busk and Quekett (Medical Times and Gazette). 



J One always endeavours to find some former indication or presentiment, 

 although even confused and full of obscurity, beyond the origin of positive 

 science ; it is curious to find in the works of the potter physician a sort of 

 germ which, when developed, may have given birth to cranioscopy, a sort 

 of foresight of the importance which the measurement of the skull would 

 one day acquire. It is in the Recepte Veritable : one of two speakers relates a 

 dream in which he saw the diiferent instruments used in geometry dispute 

 about precedence : he answers them, that man is above them all ; they exclaim, 

 that man cannot even use one of them in order to measure any part of his 

 body. [We think it best to give the original here. EDITOR.] " Quoy voyant, 

 il me print envie de mesurer la teste d'un homme, pour scauoir directement 

 ses mesures, et me sembla que la sauterelle, la reigle, et le compas me seroient 

 fort propres pour ceste affaire, mais quoy qu'il en soit, ie n'y sceu iamais 

 trouver une mesure asseuree." Bernard Palissy, (Euvres, p. 93, 12mo, Paris, 

 1844. Blumenbach says somewhere, " The habit and constant use of my 

 collection of skulls makes me understand every day the impossibility of sub- 

 jecting a variety of skulls to the rule of any possible angle, the head being 

 susceptible of so many forms, and the parts which compose it being of so 

 many different proportions and directions." See Morel, Traite des Degene- 

 rescences dans I'espece humaine, p. 68. M. Aitken Meigs, at the present day, 

 shows no less than twenty -nine different measurements of the skull which 

 must be obtained if we wish to have anything like a satisfactory idea of the same. 



