600 DESCRIPTION OF FIGURES OF SKULLS. 



the region of the parietal eminences, as is the case in advanced 

 senile atrophy ; the cavities exposed are undoubtedly larger than 

 they would, in almost any circumstances, be until some time after 

 the prime of life ; the skull however has suffered somewhat from 

 water- wear, and it is not easy to be sure that some of the excavation 

 and exposure shown in the drawing on the left parietal bone may 

 not be due to this posthumously working cause. The down-growth 

 of the occipital condyles, and of the mastoids, and the spiny 

 roughnesses developed generally at the base of the skull, and 

 specially around the posterior border of its foramen magnum, are 

 points indicative of its advance in age. A somewhat similar skull, 

 from Tosson in Northumberland, presented to the University 

 Museum by Canon Greenwell, has been described by Dr. Barnard 

 Davis in the 'Crania Britannica,' vii. PI. 54; its sex however 

 does not seem to be quite so certainly male as that of the skull 

 from Castle Carrock, and its age to be a little greater, as is also its 

 cubical capacity, 97*5 as against 95 cubic inches. The two skulls 

 are specially useful as showing the modifications, especially in the 

 way of rounding off of outlines, which the advance of old age 

 produces upon the more capacious brachy-cephalic skulls, which 

 when young might have been spoken of as ' tetes carrees/ * sub- 

 cubical,' or { subquadrate.' Both of them have retained compara- 

 tively vertical foreheads and the characteristic dip of a slightly 

 asymmetrical parieto-occipital region, the Castle Carrock skull in 

 company with a powerful lower jaw, and the Tosson skull in 

 company with a feebler one ; both have their points of maximum 

 transverse width low down upon the parietal bone, both have 

 vertical pterygoids ; but the lateral bulging produced by senile 

 change has advanced further in the Tosson specimen, and the plane 

 of maximum width has advanced further forwards relatively to the 

 long axis of the skull. Some of the peculiarities to be seen in the 

 norma lasalis and lower jaw of the Castle Carrock skull are very 

 exactly reproduced in the Tosson specimen, even to such points as the 

 non-development of some of the wisdom teeth and the small size of 

 the entire dental series. The lower jaw of the Tosson skull is feebler 

 than that of the Cumberland skull, and its coronoid fails, as is 

 more usually the case in dolicho-cephalic than in brachy-cephalic 

 skulls, to reach the level of the zygomatic arch, points which, taken 

 together with the remarkably small size of its mastoids and its lesser 

 absolute and relative height, may seem to indicate that it is 

 a female skull. However this may be, there can be no doubt that 





