storic men on view there, it would fail
for the simple reason that long ago they left their skins behind them.
He would have to get to work, therefore, on their bony parts, and
doubtless would attack the skulls for choice. By considering head-form
and colour, then, we may help to cover a certain amount of the ground,
vast as it is. For remember that anthropology in this department draws
no line between ancient and modern, or between savage and civilized,
but tries to tackle every sort of man that comes within its reach.

Head-shape is really a far more complicated thing to arrive at for
purposes of comparison than one might suppose. Since no part of the
skull maintains a stable position in regard to the rest, there can
be no fixed standard of measurement, but at most a judgment of likeness
or unlikeness founded on an averaging of the total proportions. Thus
it comes about that, in the last resort, the impression of a good expert
is worth in these matters a great deal more than rows of figures.
Moreover, rows of figures in their turn take a lot of understanding.
Besides, they are not always easy to get. This is especially the case
if you are measuring a live subject. Perhaps he is armed with a club,
and may take amiss the use of an instrument that has to be poked into
his ears, or what not. So, for one reason or another, we have often
to put up with that very unsatisfactory single-figure description of
the head-form which is known as the cranial index. You take the greatest
length and greatest breadth of the skull, and write down the result
obtained by dividing the former into the latter when multiplied by
100. Medium-headed people have an index of anything between 75 and
80. Below that figure men rank as long-headed, above it as round-headed.
This test, however, as I have hinted, will not by itself carry us far.
On the other hand, I believe that a good judge of head-form in all
its aspects taken together will generally be able to make a pretty
shrewd guess as to the people amongst whom the owner of a given skull
is to be placed.

Unfortunately, to say people is not to say race. It may be that a given
people tend to have a characteristic head-form, not so much because
they are of common breed, as because they are subjected after birth,
or at any rate, after conception, to one and the same environment.
Thus some careful observations made recently by Professor Boas on
American immigrants from various parts of Europe seem