ANTHROPOMETRIC INSTRUCTIONS. 



By the Hon'ble H. H. RISLEY, c.i.e., 



Honorabt Member of the French Academy, 



President, Anthropological Society of Bombay, 



Secretary, Anthropological Branch, Asiatic Society of Bengal. 



In selecting subjeots, only adults between the ages of 25 and 45 

 should be taken. Aocurate determination of age being of course 

 impossible, those persons must be rejected who are obviously 

 not fully grown, or who appear to be over 45, deformed persons, 

 dwarfs, cripples, and men who have suffered from any disease 

 affecting the form of the nose. In measuring the higher castes it 

 is as well also to reject persons of very black complexion and with 

 very broad and depressed noses, as in such cases there is at least 

 a suspicion of the intermixture of low-caste blood. Similarly among 

 the lower castes, men of very fair complexion and high-caste type 

 of feature should be rejected. The object is to determine the 

 standard type of each caste, and for this purpose individuals of 

 clearly exceptional colouring and feature should be excluded. 



The subjects to be measured should be made to sit down in line, 

 and great care should be taken that this order is not disturbed, and 

 that if a man gets up and goes out he returns to his proper place in 

 the line. If this rule is not observed, the subjects will get mixed, 

 and the dimensions recorded under one serial number will belong to 

 different individuals. The risk of this is not so great if all the 

 measurements required are taken consecutively on each subject. 

 But, after trying both plans myself, I think the simplest and most 

 expeditious plan is to take all the measurements for which the same 

 instrument is required on each subject in order. For instance, all 

 the subjects should be measured in order with the cephalometer, 

 each man after measurement returning to his own place, then with 

 the nasometer, then with the graduated square and steel pointer, 

 and last of all with the goniometer. If the services of an assistant 

 are available, he may be told off to watch the subjects, to see that 

 they do not change places, and to bring them up in order for 

 measurement. 



The points from and to which each measurement is taken are 

 shown in the appendix, and the instructions given there are illustrated 

 by plates. I will now add a few remarks on each measurement, 

 derived from my own experience. 



Cephalic dimensions. — These are taken with the cephalometer 

 (compas d'epaisseur de Broca). The subject should be seated on 

 a chair or stool. For the antero-posterior diameter (A — Ai in Fig. 1) 

 the starting point is the glabella. This should be felt for with the 

 forefinger, and the instrument so held that its point will pass aloug 

 the forefinger and remain firmly on the glabella. Care must be 



