UPON THE SERIES OF PREHISTORIC CRANIA. 639 



in front by a line corresponding to the upper part of the lambdoid 

 suture, and, similarly, subsequent writers have coincided with his 

 observations. There is of course no greater a priori improbability 

 attaching to the view, that as fixed a relation should subsist 

 between particular parts of the cerebral hemispheres and the 

 bony capsule thrown over them as every one knows to subsist 

 between the various factors of the dental series and the maxillary 

 and intermaxillary bones respectively of a marsupial or a placental 

 mammal. The fact however, when demonstrated, gives a fresh 

 interest to cranioscopy, and I shall revert to it further on, p. 666 

 et seqq. infra. 



The conceptacula cerebelli in the brachy-cephalic type are said 

 by some authorities l to take a more vertical direction than they 

 have in the dolicho-cephalic ; and they are also supposed to be 

 more 2 globose externally in female than in male skulls. An 

 examination of the strong male skulls of the bronze period bears 

 out neither of these views. It is true that such skulls may have the 

 lower part of the occipital bone flat and semivertical, but they 

 often have the convexity downwards of the inferior squama occipitis 

 as marked as we sometimes see it to be in skulls of feebler texture 

 in which it might be considered to be a ' deformation plastique^ 3 ,' 

 and to be due to downward pressure of the superincumbent brain. 

 And this convexity of the conceptacula cerebelli, when viewed in 

 the light which Professor Cleland (1. c. pp. 136, 162) has thrown 

 upon the extent to which ' gravitation changes ' can remodel the 

 cranium after adult life has been reached, may very reasonably be 

 considered to be due, in some measure at least, even in this robust 

 type, to the operation of the same downward pressure. Be this 

 as it may, the convexity of the inferior occipital squama of the 

 British brachy-cephali, a peculiarity which would not have been 

 visible to the eye during life, is, if not correlated with, at any rate 

 accompanied very often (see p. 601 supra) by another peculiarity, 

 which must have been eminently striking in their living heads, 

 to wit, their great relative height, which has been called ' hypselo- 

 cephaly,' or ' acro-cephaly,' and must have put them into sharp 



1 Cleland, Phil. Trans. 1870, p. 147. Thurnam, Principal Forms, p. 37. 



2 Welcker, citing J. B. Davis, A. A. i. 126, 1866, per contra Huschke, /. c. p. 21, 

 says : ' Die fosses cerebelli der Hinterhauptsschuppe beiin Manne weit ausgegra- 

 bener sind und daher aiisserlich mehr hervorragen als die weiblichen welche, wie im 

 Kinde mehr horizontal liegen.' 



3 The true ' deformation plastique ' of Dr. B. Davis I have never seen in these series. 



