256 Original Articles. [ April, 
crania, see what value is to be attached to its configuration as an 
especial character. Messrs. Busk and Huxley have already shown, 
that in the Danish Borreby skull, and in some Australian crania, 
the occipital region presents a form closely allied to the Neanderthal 
skull itself. Additional evidence of this correspondence is supplied 
by the Australian and Tasmanian crania in the Edinburgh University 
Anatomical Museum, in one of the former of which the squamous plate 
is nearly flat, and forms almost a right angle with the surface of the 
bone below the curved line. But it is not with these savage races only 
that this comparison can be made. An examination of a considerable 
number of modern British crania has shown me that a large amount of 
variation occurs in them in the form of this region, and in the extent 
of the posterior convexity of the squamous part of the occipital bone. 
And it would be quite possible to arrange, from materials to which I 
have access, a series of modern British skulls, in which this variation 
may be traced from a well-marked posterior occipital bulging to a 
configuration of the upper occipital region, closely approaching the 
form of the Neanderthal skull. Inthe skull-cap represented in Fig. 3, 
the diminished occipital conyexity is almost equal to that of the 
last-named cranium.* 
Professor Schaaffhausen regards the unusual development of the 
frontal sinuses, supra-orbital ridges, and glabella, as unquestionably 
typical race-characters, and not as an individual or pathological 
deformity. 'T'o accept such a view, however, it would be necessary to 
show that a great projection in the supra-orbital region possesses a 
definite ethnical value. But this, I would submit, is an inconstant 
feature, for great variations in the size of these ridges are exhibited 
by the crania of barbarous races, both ancient and modern, in which 
such projections have been seen. The series of New Zealand, 
Australian, and Negro crania, in the Ethnological Collection in the 
Edinburgh University Anatomical Museum, exhibits considerable 
diversities in this respect. Again, in the beautifully illustrated 
‘Crania Britannica’ of Messrs. Davies and Thurnham, whilst some of 
the ancient British crania depicted present a considerable projection 
above the orbits, in others, again, it is but shghtly marked.| And as 
we all know that no great prominence occurs as a rule in the modern 
British skull, yet, as the specimens already alluded to (p. 254) prove, 
an amount of projection may occasionally occur not much inferior to 
that in the Neanderthal skull. 
To attempt, then, to found, as Schaaffhausen has done, a typical 
race-character on so variable a feature, or to build a chief argument 
in favour of the distinct specific, nay even generic, character of a skull, 
as Professor King has done, ona solitary cranium in which such largely- 
developed supra-orbital ridges occur, does not appear to me to be 
warranted by the facts at our disposal. Mere massiveness—the 
* In the University Anatomical Museum is the skull (B. 5) of a modern 
patriotic Greek, picked up on the plain between Athens and the Pireeus, in which. 
this configuration of the occipital region is most strikingly marked. 
+ Compare, for example, the Ballidon Moor, Uley, and Kennet crania with 
those from Middleton Moor, Long Lowe, and Littleton Drew. 
