244 TnE NATURAL IIISTORT EEYIEW. 



contrary we may regard it as strictly a race-character ; just as we 

 may regard the same phenomenon in the Negro. In both it seems 

 due to the same cause, defined by Welcker, as " a luxuriant bone- 

 growth" in the still growing suture margins.* It is not improbable 

 that in dolichocephalous peoples, the great longitudinal sagittal 

 suture (in the same way, though in a much less degree than the 

 frontal suture), may be more prone to early obliteration than the 

 transverse ones, in consequence of the suture margins being more 

 early brought into apposition, from the growth of the brain being 

 more active in the longitudinal direction than in the tranverse. 

 However this may be, it is an observation of the late distinguished 

 French anatomist Gratiolet, that in the inferior races, especially 

 Africans and Alfouras, the sutures close much earlier than in Euro- 

 peans, and likewise in a different order ; the lambdoid closing first in 

 the White, the coronal in the Negro and Alfoura, and vice versa.f 

 M. Pruner-Bey also insists on the jDremature obliteration of the 

 sutures as characteristic of the Negro. The frontal and lateral parts 

 of the coronal suture are, he says, uniformly obliterated in early 

 youth. Ossification next extends to the middle of the coronal and 

 the sagittal, the lambdoid being the last to close.;]: 



It is well known that the frontal suture, which usually ossifies 



* IMd. p. 139. The same appears to be implied by Dr. Humphry, when he 

 observes, " the sutm-es are commonly obhterated earliest in those skulls in which a 

 heavy hard condition of the bones evinces a preternatural activity of the ossifying 

 processes." — Eumrm Skeleton, 1858, p. 191. 



\ Compfes BmrJus de VAearL des Sciences, T. xliii. 1856, p. 428. "Dans 

 I'homme blanc, les sutures s'ossifient d'uue maniere tardive. Cette obliteration se 

 developpe dans I'ordre suivant : 1, la suture sagittale; 2, la suture lambdoide ; 

 8, la suture fronto-parietale. Dans les races Ethiopiennes et Alfourienne, au 

 contraire, I'oblitt'n-ation des sutures est precoce; et la fronto-parietale se soude 

 avant la lambdoide. Ainsi, chez le Blanc, le crane se ferme d'abord en arriere : 

 chez le Ncgre et chez 1' Alfouroux, il se ferme d'abord en avant. On obsen^e souvent 

 le meme fait sur les cranes d'idiots appartenant a la race blanche. En outre, les 

 recentes recherches de M. M. Baillarger, Cruveilhier et Vrolik, ont mis hors de 

 doute le fait de I'ossification prematuree des sutures chez les idiots microcephales, 

 et sur I'abseuce de fontanelles chez eux au moment de la naissance." In a later 

 memoir M. Gratiolet observes, "La persistance et la complication des sutures sont 

 en general un signe favourable, et peuvent etre considerees comme les indices d'une 

 perfeetibilite plus ou nwoins etendue." — 3Ieni. de la Soc. Anthrop. T. i. p. 394. See 

 also Bull, de la Soc. d' AnfJtrop T. ii. p. 178, 243. Dr. Meigs was unacquainted 

 with M. Gratiolct's observations, when he remarked on " the periods at which the 

 different cranical sutures are closed in the various races of men ;" and when he 

 asked, " To what extent are race-forms of the cranium dependent upon the growth 

 and modifications of the sutures ?" — Nott and Gliddon, Indigenous Races, 1857, p. 

 238. 



X Mem. sur les Kegres.—Mem de la Soc. d' Antlirop. 1860-63, T. i. p. 328, 336. 

 Isl. Pruner-Bey also obsei'ves, " En general, la marche des soudures me parait 

 differer aussi selon la forme da crane dolichocephale ou brachycephale." 



