NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 275 



(losse and Duvernoy examined these crania and e mfirmed the opinion of 



Retzius. The first mentioned observer has shown that they resemble in every 

 particular certain crania found in the Crimea and described by Rathke and 

 Meyer.* To refer the Barclay fragment to the Peruvian race would he to re- 

 peat the mistake of Von Tschudi. 



Thus, then, from the foregoing details we may conclude quite posi- 

 tively that the skull found by Mr. Barclay is neither that of a Jew, Arab, 

 Egyptian, Fellah, Turk, Roman, Persian, Elamite, Tibarenian nor Libyan. 

 Reasons have also been adduced opposing the ascription to it of a Peruvian 

 origin. 



It may have belonged to the Parthians, Phrygians, Mesopotamians, Cap- 

 padocians or Cretans, in so far as these are representatives of the so-called 

 Turanian type. The craniographic data necessary to determine this point 

 satisfactorily are almost entirely wanting. 



It is, in all probability, either a Mongolian or a Sclavonian skull. In som 

 respects it resembles both, in some respects it differs from both. Hence the 

 difficulty of determining between the two, a difficulty increased by the fact 

 that these two cranial forms or types are themselves closely related, and pos- 

 sess features in common, and that the differential characters by which they 

 are distinguished reside chiefly in the facial and basal bones, parts which are 

 wanting in the Jerusalem fragment. The latter, however, as we have seen, 

 resembles more closely the Burat cranial form than that of the Moravian variety 

 of the Sclavic. It resembles the former more strikingly perhaps than any 

 other head in the collection that has not been deformed. Still it may approx- 

 imate just as closely the head of a Tschek, Wend, Slovack, Croat, Serbian, 

 Pole or any other representative of the great Sarmatian stock. I cannot make 

 the necessary comparisons to determine this point, for the Academy's collection 

 contains no specimens of these transitionary races. I say transitionary, for 

 through these Sclavonian tribes the brachykephalse of Europe graduate into 

 the brachykephalse of Asia. To be more precise, I may say, indeed, that an 

 attentive consideration of the Burat skull type leads me to the belief that the 

 short- headed races of Eastern Europe graduate into the Kalmucks and Mongols 

 proper of Asia through the Sclaves and Burats of Lake Baikal. The latter 

 people, judging from the cast in the Academy's collection, belong to a typ 

 somewhat higher in the human cranial scale than the Mongolian. According 

 to Tchihatcheff, they manifest more aptitude for civilization than the purt* 

 Mongolian tribes. 



The type of the Burat head being displayed in the fragment from Jeru- 

 salem, I refer the latter provisionally to the people and the region about Lake 

 Baikal. 



This opinion is announced not as a positive and indisputable conclusion, 

 but as an approximation to the truth, an approximation, moreover, whoso 

 scientific value is necessarily as incomplete as the facts upon which it is based 

 are limited. 



From the foregoing remarks it will be seen that neither occipital nor calva- 

 rial characters per se, are as valuable as is generally thought by craniographerti 

 in determining the race to which any particular skull belongs. In like man- 

 ner basal, facial or lateral characters, taken singly, will not be sufficient to de- 

 termine the type of a skull. This type is found neither in the base, nor in 

 the dome, neither in the occiput nor the sinciput alone. To a great extent it 

 resides in the sutures, and is determined partly by the number and location 

 of the ossific centres, and the rapidity with which development proceeds from 

 such foci, and partly by the extent and direction of this development. During 



*See Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. vii.405; compare also Fitzinger's Kssay " Ueberdie ScbZdel 

 der Avaren " Wien, 1853: and Retzius* " Blick auf den gegenwiiriigen >-i.uid;;ui)|>t der 

 Kthnologie,"' Berlin. 18i7, pp. 42, 43. 



IS 59.] 



