1864.] Kine on the Reputed Fossil Man of the Neanderthal. 91 
skulls, it is well known, the backward slope terminates near the apex 
of the lambdoidal suture, below which the occipital bone stands more 
or less vertical to the glabello-occipital plane. The Neanderthal 
cranium, in its posterior features, is approached by some savage races ; 
also occasionally by a few inhabitants of the British Isles. Moreover, 
judging from the few data at our command, the approximation appa- 
rently characterized the ancient ‘ Borreby people,” and the extinct 
race of the Meuse, supposing the latter to be represented by a nearly 
perfect skull which Schmerling obtained from the Engis cave near 
Liége ;* but in no human tribe extinct, or existing, do we find both 
the vertex and the occiput so depressed and ape-like. Well might 
Huxley have felt a “ difficulty in believing that a human brain could 
have its posterior lobes so flattened and diminished as must have been 
the case in the Neanderthal man.” 
Much*of the hinder half of the skull partakes of the slight round- 
ness just noticed; but anterior to its greatest width, in the areas which 
were embraced by the temporal muscles, the sides are perpendicular, 
and their “fore and aft” outline is straight and remarkably long. 
In these general characters, the Neanderthal skull is at once 
observed to be singularly different from all others which admittedly 
belong to the human species; and they undoubtedly invest it with a 
close resemblance to that of the young Chimpanzee, represented by 
Busk in his translation of Shaaffhausen’s memoir.t 
Another differential feature characterizes the fossil in question. 
In human skulls, even those belonging to the most degraded races, if 
the forehead be intersected at right angles to the glabello-occipital 
plane, on a line connecting the two outer orbital processes at their 
infero-anterior point, the intersection will cut off the frontal bone in 
its entire width, and to a considerable extent rising towards the coronal 
suture ;{ whereas in the Neanderthal skull, the same intersection will 
cut off only the inferior and little more than the median portion of the 
frontal. This is quite a simial characteristic, and rarely, if ever, 
occurs in man.|| 
* This is the only speciality in which the Engis and Neanderthal skulls agree. 
+ See ‘ Natural History Review,’ 1861, Plate IV. Fig. 6. 
{ See Plate II. Fig.5, BB. § See Plate I. Fig. 1, BB. 
|| I have examined and made myself acquainted with skulls belonging to the 
principal races or varieties of man, in all of which the forward position of the 
forehead, relatively to the outer orbital processes, is the general rule. The Engis 
skull exhibits it, and the same appears to be the case with the Borreby one, 
judging from the figure in Lyell’s ‘Geological Antiquity of Man,’ p. 86. It 
may be doubted that the Plymouth skull, represented by Busk (‘ Nat. Hist. Rev.’ 
1861, Pl. V. fig. 6), is an exception. I possess a very remarkable skull, probably 
about 500 years or more old, taken last summer out of the beautiful ruins of 
Coreomroo Abbey, situated among the Burren mountains, in county Clare, which 
offers a close approximation to the fossil in the depressed form of the forehead : 
indeed, although not altogether so abnormal in this respect as the Neanderthal 
skull, it has in appearance a better development, in consequence of the median 
part of its frontal being a little more rounded. There is no reason to believe that 
it belonged to an idiot, as it happens that most of the skulls lying about the ruins 
have a low frontal region. It is singular that the inhabitants of Burren a few 
hundred years ago should have been characterized by a remarkably depressed fore- 
head, while those now living have a well-developed cranial physiognomy. 
