1864. | Turner on the Fossil Skull Controversy. 251 
band of marly sand and small flints, dividing, at an angle of say 45°, 
the vegetable or brick earth on one side from the black flint deposit 
on the other.” As various remains of the Roman and Gallo-Roman 
age have been found in this locality, it is possible that the skull may 
be as old as that period, but there is no evidence that it belonged to 
an earlier time. The skull is a fragment, but possesses almost the 
same bones as the Engis cranium. It is the skull of an adult, and 
from its faintly-marked ridges and supra-orbital processes is either a 
female, or a male whose muscular development was feeble. The bones 
possess no unusual thickness or density, such as one not unfrequently 
sees in the crania of savage nations. They are, however, some- 
what friable, of a pale yellowish-brown colour, and much deprived of 
their animal matter. Numerous linear excavations due to the action 
of the roots of the plants in the soil are on their outer surface.* 
The different regions of the cranium are well proportioned to each 
other, and there are no marks of degradation about it. The strong 
resemblance in external form between this cranium from St. Acheuil 
and the Engis skull at once struck me, and careful comparative 
measurements have confirmed my first impressions. The Engis skull 
is, indeed, somewhat larger, but the proportions between the corre- 
sponding parts of the two crania are closely preserved. 
= nie Longi- Inter- Hor. 
Frontal | Parietal | Occipital | aS . os 
SKULL. Length. TeeGlin, || Gacoalin, |) Beeline | tudinal meatoid Circum- 
| | Arc. Arc, ference, 
Pens | | ——— 
* 7.5 i—4 lo Ad od 
Engis . - Cn 44, I eats Or | 13-75 | 13: 20°7 
| 
St. Acheuil. | 7-1 | 4:1 | 5-1 | 4:1 | 12:2 | 11:8 | 19-6 
The length of the Engis skull is to its breadth as 100 to 70, that 
of the St. Acheuil cranium as 100 to 71. If my supposition be correct 
that the latter is a female, the difference in size may, perhaps, be 
regarded as merely a sexual difference. The St. Acheuil skull is some- 
what more convex posteriorly in its upper occipital region; but, as a 
rule, the contours of the two crania so closely resemble each other, 
that one might almost look upon the one from St. Acheuil as a reduced 
copy of the Engis skull.t 
* The interpretation of this appearance was made for me by my friend, Pro- 
fessor Rolleston, of Oxford; and since my attention was directed to it, I have not 
unfrequently noted a corresponding appearance in bones which have been buried 
at no great distance from the surface. : 
+ The measurements of the Engis skull have been taken from a cast supplied 
by Mr. Gregory, of Golden Square, London. 
+ A minor structural difference consists in the presence of a small triquetral 
or inter-parietal bone in the St. Acheuil cranium; but such a bone, although at 
one time supposed to possess, is now known to have no especial value as an index 
of race character. I have, for example, seen it in two Australian crania, ina 
Malay, a Hindoo, a North American Indian, a Chilian Indian, a Ceylonese, a 
Scotch, and a French cranium. It can no longer be regarded as a distinctive 
peculiarity of the Peruvian skull. 
