Apr. I. SKULLS OF AMERICAN INDL4.NS. 457 



dustan, varieties of shape of tlie cranium were observed 

 "wliicli might be expressed by at least half a dozen 

 of the above-cited Greek polysyllabics, and even of 

 opposite extremes, and this, not only in the general 

 series of Nepalese skulls, but sometimes in the minor 

 series of a tribe or village.* Very analogous are the 

 results as affecting " brachycephalic," dohcocephalic," 

 &c., " families," " varieties," or " races," to which a 

 correspondingly expa,nded survey of the skulls of the 

 aboriginal Indians of America has led the accurate 

 and painstaking ethnologist, Dr. Aitken Meigs.f 



In the first place he finds that, in the general 

 series of aboriginal American crania, there is a 

 range of diversity of proportions of the cranial 

 cavity, which would give the ethnologist grounds for 

 distributing them into three groups : 1, Doliohocephali ; 

 2, Mesocepkdli ; 3, Bracliycephali ; but these are not 

 coincident with areas or periods. Not any of them 

 is distinctive of a particular family, or race, or nation, 

 or other group, either according to time or to space. 

 Thus the skulls of the Creek Indians may be, in a 

 general way ' eurycephalic,' i.e. shorter and more 

 broadly oval than those of the Assinaboins, and 

 these, in like manner, than the crania of the Ottawas. 

 But among the Creeks is a specimen (No. 441) which 

 is " brachycephalic," and a skull of one of the Dacota 

 Indians " stands between the Assiuaboin's and the 

 Creek's" (p. 37). Among the Osages of the Upper 



* "Eeport on a series of Skulls of various Tribes of Mankind inhabiting 

 Nepal," in ' Reports of the British Association for the Advancement of 

 Science,' for 1«50. 



t ' Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 

 May, 1866. 



31 



