266 PROCEEDINGS OP THE ACADEMY OF 



Great interest attaches to this skull on account of the fact that it presents 

 an excellent opportunity to test the differential value of certain craniographic 

 characters, those pertaining to the crown, occiput and temporal region. The 

 true value of craniographic criteria has not yet been settled. The special 

 investigations in this branch of natural science are as yet too limited, and 

 many of them have been undertaken in such a hasty and unphilosophical 

 spirit, and with such imperfect views of the method that rules in craniography, 

 that the generalizations thus far effected are not only few in number and of 

 limited application, but have to be used in the most careful and discriminating 

 manner. It is well known to the members of the Academy that a skull in the 

 collection marked Phoenician* was sent by M. Fresnel, the celebrated archaeolo- 

 gist, to the late Dr. Morton, without the slightest information as to where, 

 or the circumstances under which it was found. After a careful study of 

 its race characters, Dr.j M. pronounced it to be a Phoenician. He afterwards 

 learned from Fresnel that it was found in the sepulchral cave of Ben-Djemma, in 

 the Island of Malta, and probably belonged to an individual of that race, which, 

 in the most remote times, had occupied the northern coast of Africa and the 

 adjacent isles, f It will thus appear that Dr. M., guided by osteologic charac- 

 ters alone, was enabled to announce the correct geographical locality of this 

 skull, and perhaps also its true ethnic value, though of this latter point I 

 entertain, at present, some doubts, arising from the remarkable resemblance 

 which this skull bears to that of a wandering Chingan of Transylvania, de- 

 picted in Blumenbach's Decades (Tab. ii.) In like manner, some time before 

 his death, Dr. Prichard sent to Prof. Retzius two human crania, requesting an 

 opinion as to the race to which they belonged. He pronounced one of them 

 to be Roman and the other Celtic, and was informed by Prichard that he was 

 in all probability correct, for the two skulls had been dug up in an old battle- 

 field at York, England, where the ancient British Celts, the Belgas Brittanorum, 

 had been vanquished by the Romans. t Another instance, similar to these, 

 will presently be referred to. With such examples before me, I have been led 

 to attempt, as far as the materials at my command would allow, to identify 

 ethnically the skull from Jerusalem. It will be borne in mind that Drs. 

 Prichard, Morton and Retzius had entire skulls submitted to them. The skull 

 from Jerusalem, on the contrary, is, as we have just seen, in a very fragmentary 

 state. It may be said that the knowledge of the locality in which this skull 

 was found would assist materially in this investigation. But that this is not 

 the case will at once be seen when we call to mind that this locality has been, 

 for centuries, a great rendezvous for many races of men, coming from various 

 parts of Europe, Asia and Africa. Moreover the skull is somewhat unique, 

 not only in its form, (of which there is not the exact counterpart in the whole 

 Mortonian collection, ) but also in the fact that none others were found with 

 it. Desirous of ascertaining whether any other skulls, similar in form to 

 the one under consideration, had been discovered in Palestine, I examined 

 a number of works of travel. At length, in the second volume of such a 

 work published at Dublin in 1840, and entitled "Narrative of a voyage to 

 Madeira, Teneriffe, and along the shores of the Mediterranean, by W. R. 

 Wilde, M. R. I. A., &c," I came across a curious account of the discovery of 

 some human skulls in one of the ancient tombs near Jerusalem. 



During his sojourn in Jerusalem Dr. Wilde learned that within the ground 

 denominated Aceldama, or Field of Blood, (situated to the south of Mt. Sion, 

 . ^ > 



*See Catalogue of Human Crania, p. 28. 



tSee Patterson's Memoir of Morton in Types of Mankind, p. xl. 



JBlick auf den gegenwartigen Standpunkt der Ethnologie in Bezug auf die Gestalt des 

 Kncichernen Schadelgerustes. Von Prof A. Retzius, Berlin, 1857, p. 6. 



I A short notice of these crania is also contained in the Edinburgh Phrenological 

 Journal, vol. 14, p. 217. 



[Sept. 



