204 HUMAN FOSSILS. m 



these existing varieties of cranial conformation. 

 In the first place, I must remark, that, as Professor 

 Schmerling well observed {supra, p. 161) in com- 

 menting upon the Engis skull, the formation of a 

 safe judgment upon the question is greatly hin- 

 dered by the absence of the jaws from both the 

 crania, so that there is no means of deciding, with 

 certainty, whether they were more or less prog- 

 nathous than the lower existing races of mankind. 

 And yet, as we have seen, it is more in this respect 

 than any other, that human skulls vary, towards 

 and from, the brutal type — the brain case of an 

 average dolichocephalic European differing far less 

 from that of a Negro, for example, than his 

 jaws do. In the absence of the jaws, then, any 

 judgment on the relations of the fossil skulls to 

 recent Races must be accepted with a certain 

 reservation. 



But taking the evidence as it stands, and turn- 

 ing first to the Engis skull, I confess I can find 

 no character in the remains of that cranium which, 

 if it were a recent skull, would give any trust- 

 worthy clue as to the Eace to which it might 

 appertain. Its contours and measurements agree 

 very well with those of some Australian skulls 

 which I have examined — and especially has it a 

 tendency towards that occipital flattening, to the 

 great extent of which, in some Australian skulls, I 

 have alluded. But all Australian skulls do not 

 present this flattening, and the supraeiliary ridge 



