614 DESCRIPTION OF FIGURES OF SKULLS. 



border of tlie auditory foramen, is really dependent more upon the 

 length of the parietal than upon that of the occipital bone. This 

 is plain enough upon simple inspection of the skull in its norma 

 lateralis; and it is shown, secondly, by the very small difference, 

 only amounting to y^^^^ of an inch, which subsists between the 

 extreme length, 7*6", and the fronto-inial length, 7*4", taken to 

 the commencement of the linea nucha mediana ; the measurements 

 of the frontal, 5*2", parietal, 5*4'', and occipital, 5-2" arcs, are not so 

 clearly indicative. Professor Jeffries Wyman^ by a measurement of 

 eleven normal crania obtained an average of 12^ mm. (=:4'92") for 

 the frontal arc, 124 ;«m. ( = 4-88'') for the parietal, and \\7 mm. 

 ( = 4-60") for the occipital ; whilst three adult synostotic crania 

 gave for the frontal, parietal, and occipital arcs respectively 129*2 >««i. 

 (=5"), \^2mm. (=5-59"), and U^mm. (=4-68"). Welcker^ 

 similarly obtained, as against an average from normal crania for the 

 sagittal suture or parietal arc of 126 mm ( = 4*96"), an average from 

 eleven skulls with premature obliteration of the sagittal suture 

 [Dolic/io-cej)/iali ex synostosi sagittali) of 137 m7)i. ( = 5"39"). His 

 average from three ' scapho-cephali ' for the sagittal suture is 

 139 mm. ( = 5*47"). The skull now before us resembles those 

 measured by Wyman and Welcker in the great length of its 

 parietal arc ; but its occipital shows an equal excess over the 

 normal. As its sagittal suture is closed along the inner table 

 of the skull, though it is complexly denticulated externally, a 

 condition of things observable in two other very closely similar 

 skulls from the same locality, 'Rudstone, ccxxiv. 1' and 'Rudstone, 

 Ixi. 3,' it is not possible to say w^hether here an elongation of 

 the cerebral lobes produced the elongation of the brain case, or a 

 premature sagittal synostosis produced an elongation of the brain 

 in the way of compensatory outgrowth. An examination however 

 of other similarly elongated calvarise from long and other barrows, 

 as well as from interments of modern dolicho-cephalic savage races, 

 puts it beyond a doubt that the elongation of the brain is the first 

 term in the series, and that the synostosis observable in such skulls 

 as these is not a cause but a consequence merely, the sutures 

 closing because the brain does not grow in the direction at right 

 angles to their long axis ^ 



' See Observations on Ci-ania, p. 32, Boston, 1868. 

 * Wachsthum nnd Bau cles menschlichen Schadels, p. 15, 1862. 

 ^ A calvaria from the long barrow at Upper Swell, mentioned at p. 528 of this book, 

 as fovmd under the skull ' No. 2, Upper Swell,' has a parietal arc of 5'9", being one 



