NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 399 



and minute comparison, which alone can lead to any really important results. 

 Before the deeply interesting and complicated questions of ethnology can 

 receive much light from craniography, the latter must furnish extensive com- 

 parisons of the heads of different races of men, not in respect to their general 

 form only, but with reference to the exact conformation and minute anatomical 

 peculiarities of each of the several natural regions of the skull the crown, 

 base, occiput, facial and lateral aspects. Convinced of the truthfulness of 

 this statement, I have attempted, in the following pages, a comparison of the 

 heads in the Morton collection, with reference to their occipital peculiarities 

 only, hoping, at some future time, as leisure permits, to institute, in like 

 manner, a comparison of these heads with regard to their coronal, basal, 

 facial and lateral characters successively. 



A peculiar flattening of the Tipper or parietal portion of the occipital re- 

 gion characterizes the heads of Norwegians (1260),* Swedish peasants (117, 

 1247, 1249, 1258, 1486 to 14S8), Finland, Sodermannland, Turannic and 

 Cimbric Swedes (1545 to 1549, 121, 1532, 1550, 1362), Ostrogoths (1255), 

 and Swedish Finns (1542 to 1544). From about the middle of the sagittal 

 suture the parietal bones slope or shelve away posteriorly, so as to form an 

 inclined plane, which modifies or interrupts the regular ovoidal form of the 

 head, and terminates, in most instances, at the lambdoidal suture, or a little 

 below it, on the superior portion of the os occipitis.f The occipital protuber- 

 ance in all these crania is very well marked ; and in some, apparently ex- 

 aggerated by the peculiarity above mentioned. In the two ' ' ancient Cimbric ' ' 

 skulls (1532, 1550), in a very old Cimbrian head (1362), from the Danish 

 island of Moen, in the Baltic, and in the crania of an Ostrogoth (1255), and 

 a Swedish woman of the 13th century (1249), the knob-like protuberance of 

 the occiput gives to the calvaria a peculiarly elongated and kumbe-kephalic 

 or boat-shaped form. This occipital prominence is also seen in a fragmentary 

 Burgundian head (1533), from a tomb near Lausanne, in Switzerland, but is 

 not so well marked. 



From the investigations of Prof. Nilsson, it would appear that the aborigines 

 of Scandinavia, had "short heads, with broad and flattened occiputs," 

 features exhibited by other ancient people, such as the Lapps and Samoiedes, 

 the Iberians or Basques of the Pyrenees, and the mysterious Pelasgi, whose 

 traces are still found in Greece. The short-headed race of Scandinavia appears 

 to have been followed by another race of men, whose skulls were charac- 

 terized by prominent and narrow occiputs. J The hind-head of a large 

 Danish cranium, figured by Nilsson, after Eschricht, of Copenhagen, is full 

 and rounded. 



In the skulls of "true Finns" (1534 to 1541, 1252, 1259), the occiput 

 is neither prominent nor depressed, but flatly round, and in keeping, there- 

 fore, with the general globularity of the head. The Finnic cranial type 

 appears to be preserved in its greatest purity among the primitive inhabitants 

 of Esthonia. Dr. Hueck, in describing the head of an Esthonian, says, that 



*The numbers inclosed in brackets are those by which the skulls are designated in 

 my Catalogue of Human Crania in the collection of the Academy of Natural Sciences 

 of Philadelphia. 



tThis conformation also pertains to the Greenland, Scandinavian and Cretin skulls, 

 figured in Tables 3, 4 and 6, of Carus' Atlas cler Cranioscopie, Heft 1. I find it also more 

 or less strongly pronounced in the crania represented in Tables 3, 4, 8 and 9, (Sch'ddeln 

 abnormer Form), and 1, 3, 6, 9, 10 and 11, {Sch&deln lehannter Personen) of the Archi- 

 i tur des Menschenschadtls, of Dr. Lues. 



t Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, for 1847, p. 31. 



? Skandinaviska Nordens Urinvanare, eti. forsok i comparativa Ethnographien af S. 

 Nilsson, Phil. Dr. etc., Chiistianstad, 1838, i. Haftel, plate D, fig. 10. 



I860.] 



