436 DR MATTHEW YOUNG. 



Berry and Robertson, on the minus side of the Tasmanian, and in all but eight on 

 the minus side of the Australian. 



Berry and Robertson (50) assert that, taking the individual observations or 

 measurements, it is possible to construct a number of tables, one for each observation, 

 in which is shown arranged in an ascending series, according to the increase or 

 decrease of the corresponding value shown by different types compared with that 

 shown by the anthropoid ape, a progression of all the different types of skull from 

 the anthropoid ape to the modern European, and that the sequence they show in 

 each table is more or less in accordance with our accepted views at the present day 

 on the position they hold in the evolutionary scale, views which are largely due to 

 Schwalbe's researches and conclusions. They are, of course, slight variations in the 

 order exhibited by the series in the various tables. It is then possible to combine 

 the different tables and obtain the mean position of any type from the whole series 

 of observations, and the above authors insist that it is possible to obtain in this way 

 a very good idea of what position any type holds in the evolutionary scale. 



The object of their special research was the Tasmanian skull, and naming this 

 the zero point, they placed other types of skull in their approximate positions 

 relative to the former type by giving them minus values if they were between 

 the anthropoid and the Tasmanian and equal in amount to their distance from 

 the Tasmanian ; on the other hand, if the type in any table lay on the side 

 of the Tasmanian from the anthropoid, it received a plus value, and this was of 

 an amount in accordance with its distance above the Tasmanian. The plus values 

 and the minus values for the 27 observations were added together, and the total 

 that resulted, which was either plus or minus, showed whether the type in question 

 was on the plus or minus side of the Tasmanian in the scale of evolution. This, as 

 Berry admits, only gave them a rough approximation to the relative positions in the 

 above scale " by the adaptation of modern biometrical methods." Dissatisfied with 

 the above approximate result, they have obtained a true mathematical conception of 

 the problem worked out by K. Stuart Cross (38) and based on their data. 



The latter has produced an interesting paper which has " resolved itself into a 

 numerical calculation of the approximate relative positions of types (i.e. racial types 

 extinct and existent) in the evolutionary scale, together with a determination of the 

 relative values of various cranial measurements and indices employed by Schwalbe 

 as criteria in assigning these positions." 



Taking the mean values of the Scottish series examined by me, I have gone through 

 the necessary calculations shown in Cross's paper and find that as a result of the 

 consideration of the values of all the 27 observations, with the exception of the 

 glabella-inion length, the glabella chord, the cerebral chord of the frontal bone, the 

 glabella-cerebral chord index, and the angle of parietal curvature, the mean Scottish 

 skull takes up a position in the scale between the Cro-magnon skull and the European, 

 the last being "845 and the first '806, while the Tasmanian is distinctly lower, i.e. 



