CFlAP. V. ENGIS AND AUSTRALIAN SKULLS COMPARED. 



87 



day ; and as the natives of Southern and Western Australia are 

 probably as pure and homogeneous in blood, customs, and language 

 as any race of savages in existence, I turned to them, the more 

 readily as the Hunterian museum contains a very fine collection of 

 such skulls. 



" I soon found it possible to select from among these crania two 

 (connected by all sorts of intermediate gradations), the one of which 

 should very nearly resemble the Engis skull, while the other should 

 somewhat less closely approximate the Neanderthal cranium in 

 form, size, and proportions. And at the same time others of these 

 skulls presented no less remarkable affinities with the low type of 

 Borreby skull. 



" That the resemblances to which I allude are by no means of a 

 merely superficial character, is shown by the accompanying diagram 

 (fig. 6, p. 88), which gives the contours of the two ancient and of 

 one of the Australian skulls, and by the following table of measure- 

 ments. 



A The horizontal circumference in the plane of a line joining the glabella with 

 the occipital protuberance. 



B The longitudinal arc from the nasal depression along the middle line of the 

 skull to the occipital tuberosity. 



C From the level of the glabello-occipital line on each side, across the middle 

 of the sagittal suture to the same point on the opposite side. 



D The vertical height from the glabello-occipital line. 



E The extreme longitudinal measurement. 



F The extreme transverse measurement,* 



" The question whether the Engis skull has rather the character 

 of one of the high races or of one of the lower has been much dis- 

 puted, but the following measurements of an English skull, noted 

 in the catalogue of the Hunterian museum as typically Caucasian 

 (see fig. 4), will serve to show that both sides maybe right, and that 

 cranial measurements alone aftbrd no safe indication of race. 



* I have taken the glabello-occipital 

 line as a base in these measurements, 

 simply because it enables me to com- 

 pare all the skulls, whether fragments 

 or entire, together. The greatest cir- 



cumference of the English skull lies 

 in a plane considerably above that of 

 the glabello-occipital line, and amounts 

 to twenty-two inches. 



