JOHN S. PHILLIPS, ESQ.
MEMBER OF TH E ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA, &C., &C.
My Dear Sir :—Having now completed a task which has cost me some years
of toil and anxiety, it gives me great pleasure to record the many obligations I
owe you in the prosecution of these inquiries. To your ingenuity I am almost
wholly indebted for the means of obtaining the elaborate measurements appended
to this work; which, without your personal aid and untiring perseverance, would
have remained in a great measure unaccomplished. It may, perhaps, he thought
by some readers, that these details are unnecessarily minute, especially in the
Phrenological Table; and again, others would have preferred a work conducted
throughout on Phrenological principles. In this study I am yet a learner; and it
appeared to me the wiser plan to present the facts unbiassed by theory, and let the
reader draw his own conclusions. You and I have long admitted the fundamental
principles of Phrenology, viz: That the brain is the organ of the mind, and that
its different parts perform different functions: hut we have been slow to acknowledge
the details of Cranioscopy as taught by Dr, Gall, and supported and extended
by subsequent observers. We have not, however, neglected this branch of inquiry,
but have endeavored to examine it in connection with numerous facts, which can
only be fully appreciated when they come to be compared with similar measurements
derived from the other races of men. Yet I am free to acknowledge that
there is a singular harmony between the mental character of the Indian, and his
cranial developments as explained by Phrenology.