br Hodgkin on the Inhabitants of the Canary Islands. 37^ 



however, required arrangement within itself, which might 

 either consist in subdivision or gi-adual transition. In some 

 respects the latter appeared preferable, and more accordant 

 with the facts which were before me. 



Though the African skulls, generally, may be regarded as 

 elongated, and possessing that peculiar character which Dr 

 Prichard has called Steino-bregmic, and Prognathous, as re- 

 spects the form and position of the alveolar processes, there 

 are marked differences as respects the form of the forehead 

 and other parts of the cranium. In some the os frontis rises 

 almost vertically from the supraorbitar ridges, and being com- 

 paratively flat in front, makes a more prompt and decided turn 

 towards the temples than is to be found in almost any other 

 skulls. From the forehead, thus almost vertically formed, the 

 upper part of the head recedes more horizontally than in those 

 African skulls in which the opposite character of forehead is 

 most conspicuous. An admirable specimen of a head thus 

 formed had struck my attention in the cast of a Mosambique 

 Negro, preserved in the Museum of the Garden of Plants, in 

 Paris ; and I found this form to prevail, I believe, without any 

 exception, in the skulls which came from the same part of 

 Africa. In some instances, the forehead, though vertical, was 

 Tery low ; but we see the same form elevated in the beautiful 

 and capacious forehead of Leo Africanus, a learned Negro, also 

 from the eastern part of the Continent. 



In those skulls which exhibit the type which may be re- 

 garded as the opposite to that which I have just described, the 

 forehead recedes as it rises, and, in many instances, a similar 

 direction is continued to the posterior part of the head, pro- 

 ducing, as Dr Knox has justly remarked with respect to some 

 African heads, a great height from the meatus externus to 

 the vertex. The forehead recedes laterally as well as su- 

 periorly, not only causing the turn of the temples to be less 

 marked, but rendering the frontal protuberances, which are 

 very conspicuous in the former type, little, if at all, percepti- 

 ble in this. Skulls of this description belong, as far as I have 

 been able to make (jut, to the natives of the western coast of 

 Africa, and are not only remarkable for the comparatively large 

 size of the bones of the face, but are often throughout of great 



