22G 
l)i;. A. LEE AND PKOFESSOK K. PEAKSON ON 
§ IL Personal Errors made in the Direct Determination of Skull-capacity. Least square 
Eormulie.245 
§12. Formulte involving Total Height and not Auricular Height of Skull.247 
§13. Transition from Mean Product of Diameters to Product of Mean Diameters of Skull . 249 
§14. Third Fundamental Problem : the Eeconstruction from the Kegression Ecpiations of 
Characters not Measurable during Life.250 
§15. General Conclusions.260 
Appendix. —On the Correlation of Capacity and Circumferential Measurements of the 
Skull.261 
(1.) The reconstruction of an organism from a knowledge of some only of its parts is 
a problem which has occupied the attention of biologists for many years past. 
Cuvier was the first to introduce in his ‘ Discoui's sur les Revolutions de la Surface 
du Globe,’ 1812 ,"^' the idea of correlation. He considered that a knowledge of the 
size of a shoulder blade, leg, or arm might make it possible to reconstruct the whole 
individual to which tlie bone had belonged. The conception was taken up by Owex, 
but has fallen into discredit owing to the many enurs made in attempts from a wide 
lint only qualitative knowledge of the skeleton, to reconstruct forms the appreciation 
of which depends reall}" on quantitative measurement and an elaborate quantitative 
theory. Such a theory having now Ijeen developed, and anatomists having provided 
large series of measurements, it has become jiossible to reconsider the jnoblem on a 
sounder basis, and to determine more closely the limits under which our modern 
methods may be safely ajiplied. 
The three fundamental jiroblems of the subject are : (i.) The reconstruction of an 
individual, of whom one or more organs only are known, when a series of organs for 
individuals of the same local race have been measured and correlated. 
As illustration, one may take the reconstruction of the probahle stature of an 
individual for medico-legal purposes when a limb only has been found. 
(ii.) The reconstruction of the mean type of a local race from a knowledge of a 
series of one or more organs in that race, when a wide series of these and other 
organs have been measured in other races. 
As illustration, we may consider the reconstruction of the stature of ju’ohistoric 
and defunct races from the measurement of their long bones, v'hen the correlations 
between stature and long bones for some modern race have been determined from 
measurements made in the dissecting room.! 
An important question in all researches of this kind is the legitimacy of applying 
results obtained for one local race to a second. We know that the variability and 
* Page 98 of the edition of 1830, the earliest in our Librarj’. 
t See Pearson, “On the Stature of Prehistoric Races,” ‘Phil. Trans.,’ A, vol. 192, pp. 169-244. An 
attempt is now being made by Professors Windle and Pearson to collect data from English dissecting 
rooms, and an elaborate series of measurements with the like end in view are now being made in Strasburg 
on German material. 
