260 THE NATURAL HISTOET REVIEW. 



sagittal suture, where it operates most potently, and sometimes 

 without) in producing the doliehocephalism of the skulls, derived 

 from the long and chambered barrows of the ancient Britons ; for it 

 is a remarkable fact, not yet explained, that these skulls are found to 

 be specially obnoxious to synostosis."* Of the fom' sutures named, 

 which occupy a limited space in each temporal region, the obliteration 

 of the spheno-frontal and spheno-parietal, if originating during the 

 period of growth and development, may indeed produce a narrowness 

 and depression of the anterior part of the skull. Supposing the lamb- 

 doid and occipito-mastoid to be at the same time unossified, and 

 yielding within and without (though this very frequently is not the 

 case, the last-named suture, as shown by Welcker, being particularly 

 liable to premature obliterationf), then some degree of compensatory 

 growth in the direction of the occiput, may be allowed, though by no 

 means sufficient for "producing" a doliehocephalism not naturally 

 inherent in the brain and skull. As regards the lower parts of the 

 coronal and the spheno-temporal sutures, these belong to the trans- 

 verse order, and their obliteration would rather have the effect of 

 detracting from the length of the cranium. There is no doubt that 

 the sutures referred to are often obliterated in skulls from the long 

 and chambered barrows ; though whether so frequently as in other 

 dolichocephalous skulls, and especially those of Negroes, is very un- 

 certain. The early period at which two of them, viz., " the spheno- 

 frontal and the lowest parts of the coronal," are usually obliterated 

 is pointed out by Welcker, who observes, that they " form one of 

 the earliest seats of senile synostosis ;" which he explains by the 

 mutual pressure to which the opposed inverted squamous edges of 



* The Neanderthal Shull: its Peculiar Conformation E.rplained Anatomically, 

 p. 7. Memoirs of Anthropol. Soc. of London, vol. i. Comp. Bull, cle la Soc. 

 d'Anthrop. cle Paris, t. v. p. 716. I quote from the Engli&li memoir, as " printed for 

 private distribution." Dr. Davis adds in a note, ' There is a probability that the 

 earliest examples of human crania obtained from these barrows were synostotic, and 

 also deformed in the same way as the Neanderthal calvarium. At all events, one 

 of the most striking peculiarities, which impressed Sir Kichard Colt Hoare and his 

 friends with the greatest force, was the 'J'rou.i valdc dipre-^sa.' " 



Sir Richard however, though no anatomist, observed that the skulls were 

 " totally different in their formation from any others Avhicli his researches had led him 

 toexarnine." Archoeologia, vol. xix. p. 48 ;'^Comp. Cran. Brit. pi. XXIV, 5, p. 151. 

 These researches had been chiefly confined to the circular barrows ; it Avas his 

 coadjutor, INIr. Cunnington, who opened eleven of the long barrows. The long bar- 

 rows which have been excavated of late years have produced skidls remarkable not 

 only for their length, but likewise for their depressed (platycephalic) form. 



t Wachsthuni und Ban. p. 18. 



