est relic of art will serve the natural historian
of man as a fulcrum by which he may turn up a mass of genuine
information; with which, as with all knowledge, as its store increases,
the power of applying it becomes more facile; until at length it
scarcely becomes an exaggeration to say, that every material relic bears
in itself its own natural history, and, if artificially modified, the
history of its fabricators--what the germ is to futurity the relic is to
the past.

From the data which Dr Prichard has given us, in a somewhat scattered
form, we shall endeavour to collect and group the most interesting of
his facts and opinions. In order to ascertain what modifications of
physical structure, variation of climate, food, and habits, may effect
upon mankind, it is necessary, first, to review the effects produced by
such variation upon domesticated animals. It is indeed questionable
whether we can in any case, with certainty, trace these to their native
wilds; but, in many cases, we have instances of their return to a savage
state, as with the wild horses, goats, oxen, &c.; and although it does
not necessarily follow that their conformation, induced by such return,
is identical with their original structure, yet there is a reasonable
probability that such is the case, and we must take these cases for want
of better. How far, then, has the outward form been altered by the
changes induced by domestication; how far are instincts acquired by such
changes capable of hereditary transmission, and is there any, and what,
connexion between the changed instincts and the changed structure? These
questions, involving among other things the infant and difficult
science of phrenology, Dr Prichard has left very much to conjecture.
Whether he considers the data too imperfect, or is afraid of trusting
himself with any decided expression of opinion on a subject which has
been so obscured by charlatanry, and which is open to so much
misapprehension, does not appear; but it certainly is an apparently
striking defect, that where a large portion of the work is devoted to
the explanation of the different forms of the cranium in the inferior
animals and in man, and to which the largest portion of his pictorial
illustrations apply, he should give us so little insight into his
opinions as to what extent phrenology is fairly entitled to credibility.
His having taken so much pains in collecting facts and drawings on this
point, necessarily leads to