446 THE CRANIOLOGY OF MAN AND ANTHROPOID APES. 



descended, we l)elieve, from those who, from the form of their skulls 

 and other physical characters, occupied that part of P^urope and the 

 north of Africa in far distant a*»"es — the Iberian race, 



Scandinavia and North German^' are inhabited bj- a tall, fair, lon^- 

 skulled people derived from the proto- Aryan races who settled in that 

 part of our continent in the Neolithic epoch. A vast triangle having 

 its base in eastern Russia and its apex on the Atlantic in southwestern 

 France is inhabited by the broad-skulled people derived from Mon- 

 goloid or Turanian ancestors. We do not for a moment affirm that 

 these races, as such, have remained pure — far from it; ])ut the results 

 of the measurements of the heads of a great number of the existing 

 inhabitants of Europe point to the conclusions above indicated; and 

 this idea is confirmed by the cranial indices of the splendid collection 

 of crania which occupy so large a space in the museum of this college — 

 a collection which was commenced by John Hunter, and upon which 

 during the past century a great amount of time and labor has been 

 spent in describing and classifying the skulls which it contains." Our 

 collection has been added to and kept well up to date b}^ Prof. C. 

 Stewart, and might, 1 think, with advantage to science, be utilized in 

 an eli'ort to solve the debatable question of the connection l>etween the 

 Neanderthal group of men and the postglacial inhabitants of western 

 Europe. 



The characteristic physical type of paleolithic man may be still 

 recognized among the inhabitants of western P^urope, although their 

 skulls have grown more capacious, especially in the frontal region. 

 This change in the form of the ci'anium marks a corresponding advance 

 in the capacit}^ and organization of the ])rain and of the intellectual 

 ability of man; it is in truth evidence of his inherent power to over- 

 come the demand made on his mental capacity in order to cope success- 

 fully with his ever-increasing struggle for existence, i-onsequent on 

 the growth in number of his fellow-creature!^ and the more compli- 

 cated social conditions of his surroundings. Doubtless the form of 

 skull of a large proportion of the inhabitants of our island indicates a 

 cross breed formed by the intermarriage of the long and broad skulled 

 families of man who in distant ages met and intermarried in western 

 Europe, thereljy improving the stock of their descendants. Races of 

 men, such as the natives of Australia, who have remained in an 

 unchanged environnunit and without intermarriage with other people, 

 have made but little progress in their intellectual capacity, the form 

 of their skulls continuing of the same type as those possessed by the 

 paleolithic inhabitants of Europe. 



" We have about 4,000 skulls in our inusciuu, arnuij^'cd according: to the eountries of 

 which they are presumably native. All these specimens have been accurately meas- 

 ured and described in our catalogue, either by Sir W. Flower or by Mr. L. McAra, 

 under Prof. C. Stewart's supervision. 



