254 Original Articles. | April, 
In attempting, however, to form a correct estimate of this projection, 
it is necessary to bear in mind that the absence of the bones of the 
face, more especially of the nasal, malar, and upper jaw bones, tends to 
give a more marked character to it than would probably have been 
the case had they been present. 
Professor Schaaffhausen, in his remarks on this skull, states that in 
the principal European museums there are no crania which can be 
compared with it in the amount of this supra-orbital projection ; 
but he refers to various craniological memoirs, in which cases have 
been recorded of a considerable, though not so great a projection in 
this region, more particularly in the skulls of ancient and modern 
barbarous races. Mr. Huxley also, in his critical account of this 
cranium, alludes to the supra-orbital projection in Australian skulls, 
though this is not unfrequently due to a solid bony growth, the 
frontal sinuses being undeveloped. Mr. Busk has also figured the 
cranium of a red Indian,* and a skull from Borreby, in Denmark, 
stated to be of the Stone period, in which these ridges project con- 
siderably. In the Ethnological collection in the Anatomical Museum 
of the University of Edinburgh, are also several crania, in which they 
constitute a striking feature. Some of the New Zealand and Tas- 
mania crania, for example, are cases in point. But this character is 
by no means confined, as it appears to have been far too generally 
believed, either to the crania of modern savage races, or to those 
former denizens of these islands and of continental Europe, the men 
of the Stone period, of the age of Iron or of Bronze. It is a character 
which occasionally crops out, as it were, not only in the men, but the 
women even, of the British Islands at the present day, and at times 
attains a prominence which, though not quite equalling, yet is but 
little removed from that in the Neanderthal skull. I have now7 before 
me three modern British crania, and the cast of a fourth (Fig 1) in the 
Museum of the College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (No. 34), in which 
it may be studied. In the whole of these skulls, the prominence of 
the glabella and supra-orbital ridges is most strikingly marked, 
especially in the extent to which they project forward, though none 
of them exhibit so massive a form at the external orbital processes as 
the Neanderthal skull. In two of the crania more particularly (one 
of which is that of an old woman, Fig 2), there is a deep depression 
at the root of the nose, such as to all appearance the Neanderthal skull 
possessed when in its perfect state. 
The low retreating forehead is a character which presents much 
variety in human crania In the one from the Neander valley it is con- 
siderable ; but as Mr. Huxley has remarked, the supra-orbital projection 
causes the forehead to appear still lower and more retreating than it 
really is. But what the true slope of the forehead may have been, there 
is now some difficulty in accurately determining, on account of the frag- 
mentary nature of the skull, rendering it difficult to say what was the true 
position of the head. The influence which a change in the position of 
the head exercises on the slope of the forehead, either in adding to or sub- 
* ‘Nat. Hist. Review,’ vol. i. pl. v. 
+ The figures refer to the accompanying plate. 
