CRANIOLOGY OF PEOPLE OF INDIA. 745 



village or in adjacent villages, of individuals or families of, say, two different races, 

 one of which may have reached the place either as captives in war, or as invaders, 

 and the other may represent the aboriginal inhabitants. Skulls collected in such a 

 district would be therefore those of distinct races, and might possess very different 

 forms and proportions, although cohabitation and the production of a mixed breed would 

 also doubtless give rise to a people in which the individuality of the parent types would 

 be lost. 



There are, however, certain parts of the globe where, from the climatic con- 

 ditions, or the geographical position, an almost perfect isolation of the people is 

 possible, and where one may expect to find the race as nearly as possible in its 

 purity. 



It is customary, for instance, to speak of the Esquimaux as a dolichocephalic race, 

 and numerous skulls have been measured and recorded in evidence of this character. 

 For my present purpose I may refer to the specimens enumerated and measured in Sir 

 Wm. Flower's catalogue,* where the mean cephalic index of twenty-seven crania was 72. 

 Twenty-five of these crania ranged in the length-breadth index from 66*1, the 

 minimum, to 76'6, the maximum, but two specimens were respectively 78*1 and 787, 

 i.e., in the higher term of the mesaticephalic group. It is to be noted that both of 

 these were from the eastern side in proximity to Baffin's Bay, where the possibility of 

 the production of a half-breed by intercrossing with a brachycephalic Dane is not 

 unlikely to have occurred. 



In the Anatomical Museum of the University of Edinburgh are twenty-two adult 

 Esquimaux crania collected at various places from Greenland to Behring Straits. 

 Eighteen of these had a mean length-breadth index 71 '4, and the range was 

 from 69*3 to 75*7; they may all be regarded as essentially dolichocephalic. The 

 remaining four specimens presented different proportions, for the length-breadth 

 indices ranged from 76*2 to 87, so that three were mesaticephalic and one hyper- 

 brachy cephalic. A special interest is to be attached to these four crania, as they 

 belonged to the western division of the Esquimaux, and were collected by the late Mr 

 John Simpson, t Surgeon to H.M.S. Plover, at Point Barrow, Kotzebue Sound, on the 

 American side of Behring Straits. From Mr Simpson's description communication 

 takes place yearly with the Asiatic coast by boats, which cross the Straits after mid- 

 summer, and an active trade is carried on between the Esquimaux and the Asiatics. 

 Opportunities are therefore given for an intermixture of the brachycephalic people of 

 Northern Asia with the dolichocephalic Esquimaux, and in this manner a crossing 

 of the two races and the production of half-breed children could without difficulty arise ; 

 or some of the Asiatics might, and it is probable do, stay and cohabit with the Esqui- 



* Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, 1879. 



t See an excellent description of the locality and people by Mr John Simpson in the Nautical Magazine, vol. xxiii. 

 p. 639, 1854. A fifth specimen from the same locality was dolichocephalic, with a length-breadth index 72*7. It is 

 included in the eighteen crania referred to in the text. 



