A Sketch of /lis Work as a Craniologist, 2 t. 



Towards the end of the 18th century Blumenbach had drawn 

 attention to the significance of variations in the form of the skull 

 in different races, but it was reserved for Anders Retzius to place 

 this subject upon a scientific basis. In 1840 he made his first 

 communication to the Academy of Science of Stockholm. 

 Blumenbach had attached special importance to the shape of the 

 anterior part of the skull, such as the forehead and jaws, but 

 Retzius showed that it was even more important to examine the 

 cranium, or that part of the skull which contains the brain. It is 

 to him that we are indebted for the division of skulls into long, or 

 dolichocephalic, and short, or brachycephalic, according to their 

 relative length and breadth. He maintained that the Caucasian 

 race of Blumenbach was a mixed one, since it consisted of both 

 short and long-headed people, the proportion between these two 

 varying in different places according to the degree to which the 

 primitive stock had been invaded, or replaced, by a foreign 

 element. Anders Retzius devoted himself with great energy to 

 the determination of the distribution throughout Europe, both 

 amongst the living races and prehistoric remains, of these two 

 types of heads. His work slowly, but surely, gained general 

 recognition, and before his sudden death in i860 craniology was 

 engaging the attention of many distinguished workers. Several 

 events which happened about this time tended to create a more 

 general interest in this subject. Thus the discovery in 1857 in a 

 limestone cave in the Neanderthal of the remains of an extinct 

 race whose skulls had a very remarkable form, and in some respects 

 ape-like appearance, raised a keen discussion as to the significance 

 of certain cranial characters, while the publication two years later 

 of Charles Darwin's work "On the origin of species by means of 

 natural selection," inevitably turned men's attention to all biological 

 problems with wider interest and renewed energy. 



Grattan's work was almost cotemporaneous with that of Anders 

 Retzius, and nearly all of it was done before the German and 

 French Schools had elaborated their schemes of skull measurements. 



The general plan which he devised for this purpose is given in 

 his paper published in 1853, and it is not essentially altered, but 



