163 FOSSIL REMAINS OF MAN. 



has enabled us to form a very vivid conception of the de- 

 graded character of the JSTeanderthal skull, by placing 

 side by side with its outline, that of the skull of a Chim- 

 panzee, drawn to the same absolute size. 



Some time after the publication of the translation of 

 Professor Schaaif hausen's Memoir, I was led to study the 

 cast of the J^eanderthal cranium with more attention than 

 I had previously bestowed upon it, in consequence of 

 wishing to supply Sir Charles Lyell with a diagram, ex- 

 hibiting the special peculiarities of this skull, as compared 

 with other human skulls. In order to do this it was 

 necessary to identify, with precision, those points in the 

 skulls compared which corresponded anatomically. Of 

 these points, the glabella was obvious enough ; but when 

 I had distinguished another, defined by the occipital pro- 

 tuberance and superior semicircular line, and had placed 

 the outline of the Neanderthal skull against that of the 

 Engis skull, in such a position that the glabella and oc- 

 cipital protuberance of both were intersected by the same 

 straight line, the difference was bo vast and the flattening 

 of the N^eanderthal skull so prodigious (compare Figs. 23 

 and 25 A), that I at first imagined I must have fallen into 

 some error. And I was the more inclined to suspect this, 

 as, in ordinary human skulls, the occipital protuberance 

 and superior semicircular curved line on the exterior of 

 the occiput correspond pretty closely with the lateral 

 sinuses ' and the line of attachment of the tentorium inter- 

 nally. But on the tentorimn rests, as I have said in the 

 preceding Essay, the posterior lobe of the brain ; and 

 hence, the occipital protuberance, and the curved line in 

 question, indicate, approximately, the lower limits of that 

 lobe. Was it possible for a human being to have the brain 

 thus flattened and depressed ; or, on the other hand, had 

 the muscular ridges shifted their position ? In order to 



