deed, such an attempt, in the present state of onr knowledge, would
be premature, and therefore liable to the errors inseparable from
hasty examinations. Some of these questions, it is true, have already
been answered; some are being solved even now; while others,
such as the law of divergent forms, are professedly among the most
obscure problems in the whole range of scientific inquiry. Nevertheless,
I call the attention of the reader to a brief and general analysis
of some of the most prominent of these subjects, as the best method
of showing the importance of this newest of the. sciences, its nature
and power, the methods of procedure adopted, and the results which
may reasonably be expected to flow from its cultivation. And I
do this designedly, for I have been actuated, in contributing this
paper to a popular scientific work, with the desire of presenting a
novel, and with me, favorite study, in its proper light before the people,
hoping thereby to arrest the progress of certain ill-founded suspicions,
which, in some quarters, have sprung up as the result of a
fear that the inquiry was detrimental, instead of advantageous, to the
best interests of man.
Cranioseopy is a new science. Dating from the time of B ltjmen-
bach, with whom it fairly begins, it is scarcely 70 years old; and its
cultivators, even at the present moment, number but a few names.
Indeed, so little attention has been paid, in general, to the Natural
History of Man, that we find L awrence, so late as the . summer of
1818, expressing himself in the following words:!? “ Accurate, beautiful,
and expensive engravings have been executed of most objects
in natural history, of insects, birds, plants: splendid and costly publications
have been devoted to small and apparently insignificant departments
of this science; yet the different races of man have hardly,
in any instance, been attentively investigated, described, or compared
together: no one has approximated and surveyed in conjunction
their structure and powers: no attempt has been made to delineate
them, I will not say on a large and comprehensive, but not even on
a small and contracted scale; nobody has ever thought it .worth while
to bestow on a faithful delineation of the several varieties of man
one-tenth of the labor and expense which have been lavished again
and again on birds of paradise, pigeons, parrots, humming-birds,
beetles, spiders, and many other such objects. Even intelligent.and
scientific travellers have too often thrown away on dress, arms, ornaments,
utensils, buildings, landscapes, and obscure antiquities, the
utmost luxury of engraving and embellishment, neglecting entirely
the being, without reference to whom, none of these objects possess
either value or interest. In many very expensive works, one is disappointed
at meeting, in long succession, with prints of costumes —
summer dresses, and winter dresses, court and common dresses—the
wearer, in the meantime, being entirely lost sight of. The immortal
historian of nature seems to have alluded to this strange neglect in
observing, ‘ quelqu intérêt que nous ayons a nous connaître nous
memos, je ne sais si nous ne connaissons pas mieux tout ce qui n’est
pas nbus.’11 Indeed, whether we investigate the physical or the moral
nature of man, we recognize at eveiy step the limited extent of our
knowledge, and are obliged to confess that ignorance which a Rousseau
and a Buffon have not been ashamed to avow.” — “ The most
useful, and the least successfully cultivated of all knowledge, is that
of man ; and the description on the temple of Delphi (rWi gsawov)
contained a more important and difficult precept than all the books
of the moralists.”1- Twelve years after this was written, we behold
Dr. M orton compelled to conclude a lecture upon “ The different
Forms of the Skull as exhibited in the Five Races of Men," without
being able to present to his audience either a Mongolian or a Malay
skull.. Our surprise at this will be somewhat lessened, however,
when we call to mind the fact, that, at this time, the celebrated Blu-
menbachian collection contained but 65 skulls. And now, in 1856,
we are again reminded, by a British ethnographer, of the difficulties
which beset the study of cranioseopical science. “ It is truly surprising,”
says D a v is , “ how great the destruction of human crania,
all-important for our design, has been, and how rapidly all such
genuine remains of the Britons, Romans, and Anglo-Saxons are now
escaping from the grasp of science. . The progressive enclosure of
our wild tracts, the extension of cultivation, and the introduction of
a more perfect agriculture, have in modern times destroyed multitudes
of the oldest sepulchres, and all that they contained. And it
is unfortunate that the researches of antiquaries, who have opened
barrows and exeavated cemeteries with inquiring eyes, have been
almost equally fatal to the cranial remains of their occupants. Arma
personal ornaments, and other relics deposited with the dead, have
generally engrossed attention, to the exclusion of the tender and
fragile bones of their, possessors.”1^ Notwithstanding these obstacles,
11 Buffon, “ De la Nature de l’Homme,” Histoire Naturelle Générale et Particulière Paris
1749, T. 2, p. 429. ’
12 Discours sur l’Inégalité ; Preface.
18 Letter to J. R. Bartlett^ Esq., Transactions of the American Ethnological Society VoL
ii., New York, 1848, p. 217.
14 Crania Britannica. Delineations and Descriptions of the Skulls of the Early Inhabitants
of the British Islands ; together with Notices of their other Remains. By J. Barnard Davis,
M. R. C. S., F. S. A., etc., and John Thurnam, Mi D., F. S. A., &c. London,- 1858, Decade
L, p. 2. Judging from the first decade, this admirable work promises, when completed, to