OF NEW ENGLAND INDIANS. 9 



typical cranium, as adduced from the measurements, has no real existence. Undoubtedly 

 there are skulls in the collection that unite many of the characteristic features indicated by 

 the above measurements, and it is possible that there may be a few which combine them 

 all, but the variations are so great that the eye is hardly able to single out any one form 

 as typical. For this purpose one will do as well as another, but not one is satisfactory. In 

 this respect there is a marked difference between this collection and those from some other 

 localities. Take for instance, the crania from the stone graves of Tennessee now in the 

 Peabody Museum, or those from Greenland, now in the Army Medical Museum, and there 

 runs through each series a certain prevailing form which is at once recognized. Here, 

 however, no such uniformity exists. The crania differ among themselves in every possible 

 way ; and, in their distinguishing features, are so hopelessly mixed, that even though the 

 range, or difference between the different extremes is no greater than in either one of the 

 other collections, yet the entire series, judged by the eye, is too colorless to permit of the 

 recognition of any type or standard save that furnished by the calipei-s and the " rule of 

 three." These, however, do give us rather a solid foundation upon which to build, and 

 justify us in asserting that, whilst the entire series considered with reference to the index 

 of breadth does not supply us with sufficient data to reconstruct the typical prehistoric 

 Indian skull of New England, granting such a thing to have existed, it does indicate an ad- 

 mixture of the different forms such as might be looked for in a collection made from the 

 potter's field of London or New York. This is in accord with what is known of the exist- 

 ence of different forms of crania among the American aborigines, and of the circumstances 

 under which this collection was made. It is, as has been said, composed of crania from 

 different tribes (though belonging perhaps to the same linguistic family) and it contains 

 skulls that range from the extreme of dolichocephalism to a moderate degree of brachy- 

 cephalism. Though, strictly speaking, it occupies a medium position between these two 

 classes, yet the tendency is so decidedly to the former that it may be said partially to bear 

 out the conclusion of Dr. Busk as to the prevalence of the dolichocephalic form of skull 

 upon the Atlantic coast of North America.^ 



As a matter of interest and for the sake of comparison the following table of mean 

 measurements of crania has been added. It might have been indefinitely extended, but 

 for obvious reasons it was deemed best to limit it to crania from North America. Num- 

 bers 1, 2 and 3 are taken from Dr. Wilson's Prehistoric Man ; Nos. 6 and 7 are made up 

 from the check-list of the Army Medical Museum, and Nos. 4 and 5 are from the records of 

 the Peabody Museiun of Ethnology at Cambridge. 



1 Journal of the Anthropological Institute of London, for April, 1873, p. 95. 



