268 PROCEEDINGS OP THE ACADEMY OF 



Turks. Judging from the figure in Blumenbach's Decades, above alluded to, 

 the Turks are craniographically distinct from the Tartars and the Kalmucks, 

 and should he regarded, as I have elsewhere maintained,* as an originally 

 peculiar race, standing mid-way between the European and the Mongol, with 

 which they are transitionally connected by sub-types, which have resulted 

 from a double amalgamation on the part of the Turk, whose genealogical im- 

 purity we know to be very great. In the absence of Turkish crania in the 

 collection, I am not able to speak positively upon this subject. In the Museum 

 of the Army Medical Department, Fort Pitt, Chatham, England, there are two 

 skulls obtained from the Turkish burial ground at Scutari. These are de- 

 scribed by Dr. Williamson, in the following words : "No. 18. Cranium large, 

 round, and very capacious ; forehead high ; vertex high, and very well 

 arched ; occiput rounded ; space for the downward development of the cere- 

 bellum considerable ; nasal bones well arched. No. 19. Cranium very large 

 and capacious, and exceedingly well arched ; forehead high and broad ; vertex 

 high, and occiput well rounded ; facial bones well placed ; the alveolar pro- 

 cesses perpendicular, and the facial angle very high ; lachrymal canal large."! 

 The Turkish cranium is nearly globular, and though the external, occipital 

 protuberance is but little developed, yet the occiput as a whole is rounded, 

 and not vertically flattened as in Dr. Wilde's specimen, and the fragment 

 found by Mr. Barclay. The latter is therefore not Turkish. Neither is it 

 Jewish, for the Semitic skull, judging from the specimens in the collection of 

 the Academy, is a long oval in form. Thus No. 842, the skull of a Theban 

 Hebrew, aetat. 40 years, X belongs to the dolicho-kephalic class of Retzius. The 

 crown is oval in shape, and the occiput regularly rounded. Nos. 818, 845, 

 865 and 870 exhibit the same general form, as may be seen by referring to the 

 lithographic representations of these skulls in the Crania ^Egyptiaca of Mor- 

 ton.^ No. 807|| is an oblong and somewhat angular head, with a perceptible 

 flatness of the basal portion of the occiput, which renders the occipital protu- 

 berance apparently more prominent than in the other skulls of this group. 

 No. 879, ^ though preserving the oval configuration, is not so long a head as 

 the others. In the 28th and 34th Tables of the Decades Craniorum, Blumen- 

 bach figures two Jewish skulls, one of a young person and the other of a 

 centenarian. Unfortunately they are represented neither in profile nor in 

 posterior view, and it is impossible, therefore, to determine satisfactorily the 

 shape of the occipital region, or even the general form of the skull. In de- 

 scribing the physical characters of the Semitic Atlantidse, (Arabians, Jews and 

 Kaldani or Syrians of Kurdistan,) Latham says that these people possess 

 " dolikhokephalic capacious crania, with straight or prominent nasal and 

 orthognathic maxillary profiles."** In another place he says that the cranium 

 of the Jew differs from that of the Arab in its greater capacity.ft Dr. Wil- 

 liamson describes a " Skull from the Jews' burial ground, on the road to Kolla- 

 lie," in the following terms : " Forehead low and and receding ; posterior part 

 of the cranium large compared to the anterior ; superciliary ridge high and 



* Cranial Characteristics of the Races of Men in Indigenous Races of the Earth, 

 Philada., 1857, pp. 273-4. 



t Observations on the Human Crania contained in the Museum of the Army Medical 

 Department, Fort Pitt, Chatham. By George Williamson, M. D. Dublin, 1857, p. 80. 



X Figured in Crania ./Egyptiaca, Plate 11, fig. 2: This drawing very accurately repre- 

 sents the skull in question. The reduced wood-cut in the Catalogue of Human Crania 

 in the Collection of the Academy, (p. 34) is an inexact copy of this drawing The outline 

 of ihe posterior part of the head is drawn inaccurately. 



6 Plate 5, fig. 4 ; pi. 12. figs. 1, 2 ; pi. 6, fig. 2 ; pi. 6, fig. 8. 



II Pi. 2, fig. 8. 



If PI. 8, fig. 2- 



** Nat. Hist, of the Varieties of Man, London, 1850, p. 511. 



ft Ibid, p. 514. 



[Sept. 



