A Sketch of his Work as a Cranioiogist. 25 



has to deduce congruous and general laws from an extensive 

 collection of apparently incongruous and heterogeneous facts. 

 In every age, and amongst all races, special individuality of 

 character must necessarily have been accompanied by considerable 

 modifications of typical form so that no single cranium can, per 

 se, be taken to represent the true average characteristics of the 

 variety from which it may be derived. It is only from a large 

 deduction that the ethnologist can venture to pronounce with 

 confidence upon the normal type of any race, or reasonably 

 expect to attain in his craniological investigations that measure of 

 completeness necessary to rescue them from their present objectless 

 character, and to impart to his conclusions scientific definiteness 

 and value. If an improved method of measurement be thus 

 desirable when treating of existing races whose crania form but 

 one, though by no means the least important, element for 

 determining the influences that may have contributed to their 

 development and progress, still more necessary does it become 

 when we endeavour to investigate the moral, social and intellectual 

 condition of our remote predecessors, of whom we possess few, if 

 any, records, save such as remain to us in their rude structures 

 and works of art, and in their own osseous remains. These 

 latter are, necessarily, few in number, widely scattered, singularly 

 frail and perishable, and are, day by day, irretrievably disappearing 

 before the unavoidable encroachments of extending civilization. 

 If we are to indulge, therefore, in any well-grounded expectation 

 of our being able to render the fleeting records of the past 

 available for contrast with the more accessible materials of the 

 present, it is of the first importance that our description of such 

 should be as accurate and as free from ambiguity as the nature of 

 the subject will permit — the paucity of our material affording but 

 little prospect of our accumulating the necessary data, unless we 

 can succeed in concentrating upon some recognized scientific plan 

 the detached labours of every competent observer." 



Grattap's attention to these questions appears to have been due 

 to the action of his friend Edmund Getty who had collected a 

 considerable number of skulls during his well-known researches 



