R. Crewdson Benington 
317 
of the nose («) is measured from nasal suture to nasal suture, and also the 
minimum subtense (p), i.e. the line from this chord in the median plane per- 
pendicular to the nasal bridge. The ratio lOOp/n is the simotic index and measures 
-the snubbiness or flatness of the nasal bones at the bridge. A. special instrument 
for taking the measurements has been devised by Merejkowsky himself and a 
simometer of this type was kindly lent to us by Professor Thane. The instrument 
does not strike one as mechanically efficient. Tlie distances to be measured are 
extremely small, one reading in the differential measurement of the subtense being 
often a fraction of a millimetre, and the bearings for such tine measurements 
were quite inadequate. These we improved, but the addition of fine micrometer 
screws and an absolute not a differential determination of the subtense would 
be requisite for really accurate work. The results are given for what they are 
worth, and they may be useful in comparing the value of various rhinal 
indices. 
The table on p. 318 brings together all the measurements made by Miss Ryley* 
and reduced by Miss Bell. 
Now some very noteworthy results flow from this table. It will be evident 
that the Mesodacryal Index a has remarkably little variation within the race 
compared with either the Mesodacryal Index /3 or the Simotic Index. It there- 
fore has some advantages in use over the two latter. It measures, however, a 
quite different character to the Simotic Index and we see at once that the racial 
order is not the same for simotic and mesodacryal measurements. That is to say 
an order based purely on the nasal bones may not be the same as one based on the 
entire bridge of the nose. 
Judging first by the simotic index we have the following results : 
(<x) The Negro races have flatter nasal bones than Egyptian or European. 
(b) There is a marked sexual difference, the women being in every case 
more platyrhinal than the men, the difference however being less marked in the 
negroid than European and Egyptian races. 
(c) From the standpoint of variability the Negroes are far more variable 
than Egyptian or European. 
From this view of the matter we are again confronted by the probability 
that it is the European who has been more stringently selected from a primitive 
stock than the Negro, and that in the nasal bones the female has retained rather 
more of the primitive character — nasal flatness — than the male. 
* All the measurements on which the constants of this Table are based for the four races were 
taken by Miss Ryley. This was done because (i) the measurements are extremely delicate and it is 
desirable that they should be made by one person for all races investigated in order to avoid errors due 
to personal equation and (ii) because we feel convinced from our re-measurements that Dr Benington's 
mesodacryal arc, the " Tape Dacry " of his Tables I and II, has not been measured in the same manner 
for the Congo male and female crania — an interval of several months elapsed between the two sets 
of measurements made by Dr Benington and Miss Thomson respectively— and that the "Tape Dacry " 
column of Table II for the female Congo skulls must be cancelled. 
