26 



Professor Arthur Keith 



[Feb. 20, 



To those who have given no special attention to the form of 

 hnman heads, it may seem that the short-headed and the long-headed 

 are but variants of one type. The difference is much greater than a 

 mere individual variation ; it is a radical difference. It is fortunate 

 for my present purpose that Robert Burns was a good representative 

 of the long-headed type of man. In Fig. 2, the profile of his skull 

 is contrasted with a drawing made from the skull of the short-headed 

 race which reached England for the first time at the close of the 

 neolithic period — some 2,000 years before the time of Christ. A 

 glance at those two figures reveals an essential difference in con- 

 formation — a difference which is chiefly confined to that part of the 



200 



3HAP^ESPEAR£ 



MOD. Ef^GLfSH 



Fig. 1. — The crown of Shakespeare's head as represented in the Stratford 

 bust, with the corresponding view of a skull of moderate size. Both are 

 drawn to the same scale. 



head which ihes behind the ear-holes. In Burns, the long-headed, 

 the occiput forms a backward, projecting eminence ; in the short 

 skull, the occiput is flattened as if it had been compressed from 

 behind by the apphcation of a board during infancy. There is 

 another difference between these two types of heads ; in the long 

 head, the vault is low and flat ; in the round head, the vault wells 

 upward to a crown, as if the brain, when~ compressed from behind, 

 had forced up the middle part of the roof of the skull. How it has 

 come about that there is this radical difference between the two 

 prevaihng types of human heads in Europe, we do not know : there 

 is a secret hidden here which has not been discovered as yet. All 



