C. D. Fawcett 
409 
some years past. When this scheme was started but little had been done to obtain 
a scientific measure of the variability and correlation of the parts of the human 
body. Innumerable anthropometric, including craniometric measurements, had 
been made and published but very little had been done in determining scientifically 
their statistical constants. In fact there was considerable danger that the want of 
proper statistical theory would bring the science of craniology into discredit with 
archaeologists. The manner in which variation is dealt with even in such a classical 
work as Rtitimeyer and His's Crania Helvetica is astonishing to the statistician who 
has realised the nature of the distribution of any character in a homogeneous 
population. A considerable population can be measured and we can determine 
whether or no it is sensibly differentiated from a second statistically defined popu- 
lation. But to classify a few individuals into different races by means of two or 
three measurements, such as the cephalic index, the length, or the facial angle, — 
before the correlation and the variation of these characters have been determined 
for even a single race— is a veiy dangerous proceeding, and calculated to bring 
craniometry into discredit*. 
It was with a view accordingly of providing anthropologists with the needful 
constants for determining racial differences that the scheme spoken of was started. 
It consisted partly in the reduction of existing published measurements, and partly 
in the measurement of new and large series, where such were not already available. 
A fairly comprehensive series of determinations of variability in man were made 
by Dr Alice Lee, Mr G. U. Yule, and Professor K. Pearson, and published by the 
latter in his Chances of DeatJi and other Studies in Evolution, Vol. I. pp. 256 — 277. 
Further a considerable quantity of new material was collected and reduced in a 
series of papers entitled : Data for the Problem of Evolution in Man, published by 
the Royal Society in their Proceedings and Transactions. 
The fiist really scientific determination of the variability of the skull was 
published by Stieda in 1882f, but the value of his paper lies only in the hint that 
the mathematical methods used by Quetelet and Galton in anthropology ought 
to be applied to craniology. He does not apply his method to any extensive 
series of comparative results nor extend it to tests of racial differentiation. A 
much more complete series for the variation of the parts of the skull is given in 
the paper in The Chances of Death referred to above (see pp. 323—372). The first 
determination of the correlation of any parts of the skull was, we believe, made in 
1895 and published by Professor Pearson in his memoir on Regression, Heredity, 
and Panmixia\. He correlated length and breadth of skull in modern Germans, 
modern French, and in the Naqada crania, which had just then reached England. 
Further correlation results, giving the values in the case of length, breadth, and 
* Nothing is here said of the power of distinguishing races which an anatomical craniologist may 
possess after long experience of types. But many such craniologists make their ultimate appeal — 
and this without the requisite statistical knowledge — to craniometry and not to anatomical appreciation. 
t " Ueber die Anwendung der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung in der anthropologischen Statistik." 
Archiv fiir Anthropologie, Bd. xiv. SS. 167 — 182. 
+ Phil. Trans. Vol. 187, A, pp. 279—281. 
Biometrika i 44 
