Despite all the labour that has been bestowed on the subject, craniometric literature is at present as unsatisfactory as it is dull. Hitherto observations have been concentrated on cranial measurements as methods for the discrimination of the skulls of different races. Scores of lines, arcs, chords, and indexes have been devised for this purpose, and the diagnosis of skulls has been attempted by a process as mechanical as that whereby we identify certain issues of postage-stamps by counting the nicks in the margin. But there is underlying all these no unifying hypothesis; so that when we, in our sesquipedalian jargon, describe an Australian skull as microcephalic, phænozygous, tapeino-dolichocephalic, prognathic, platyrhine, hypselopalatine, leptostaphyline, dolichuranic, chamaeprosopic, and microseme, we are no nearer to the formulation of any philosophic concept of the general principles which have led to the assumption of these characters by the cranium in question, and we are forced to echo the apostrophe of Von Török, “Vanity, thy name is Craniology.” It is significant that so many of the earlier craniologists recognised that the really important problem before them was to gain a knowledge of the size and relative proportions of the various regions of the brain, this being a direct result of the phrenological studies then so much in vogue. When phrenology became discredited, this aspect of craniometry was largely neglected; but recently it has exhibited signs of a healthy revival, and the inner surface of the cranium is now regarded as more instructive than the outer. Though for a time craniology was hailed as the magic formula by which alone all ethnological tangles could be unravelled, measurements of other parts of the body were not ignored by those who recognised that no one measurement was sufficient to determine racial affinities. [Sidenote: =Anthropometry.=] Thus Anthropometry began to map out definite lines of research, and detailed studies were made of arms and legs, hands and feet, curves and angles, brains and viscera; while, shorn of its extravagant claims, craniology took its legitimate place as one in a series of bodily measurements. One of the earliest workers in measurements other than that of the skull was Charles White (1728-1813). His contribution to Somatology was a series of measurements on arms; and he discovered that the fore-arm of the Negro is longer, in comparison with his upper-arm, than that of the European, and that that of the Ape is relatively longer than that of the Negro. On account of these measurements on the living (no less than fifty Negroes were measured), White has been claimed as the founder of Anthropometry. Soemmerring (1755-1830), however, had made use of measurements in his comparison of the anatomy of the Negro with the European. [Sidenote: =Measurements and Observations of Living Populations.=]