Note 656 — Chapter XVII · ON THE THEORY OF TRANSFORMATIONS, OR THE COMPARISON OF RELATED FORMS*

It was these very drawings of Dürer’s that gave to Peter Camper his notion of the “facial angle.” Camper’s method of comparison was the very same as ours, save that he only drew the axes, without filling in the network, of his coordinate system; he saw clearly the essential fact, that the skull varies as a whole, and that the “facial angle” is the index to a general deformation. “The great object was to shew that natural differences might be reduced to rules, of which the direction of the facial line forms the norma or canon; and that these directions and inclinations are always accompanied by correspondent form, size and position of the other parts of the cranium,” etc.; from Dr T. Cogan’s preface to Camper’s work On the Connexion between the Science of Anatomy and the Arts of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture (1768?), quoted in Dr R. Hamilton’s Memoir of Camper, in Lives of Eminent Naturalists (Nat. Libr.), Edin. 1840.