Crania Americana; Or a Comparative View of the Skulls of Various Aboriginal Nations of North and South America: To Which Is Prefixed an Essay on the ... Human Species at Species (Classic Reprint)

Sa. MEMBER OF THE ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA, C.5 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, be 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: but 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 I ndian, and his cranial developments as explained by Phrenology.
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