666 GENERAL EEMABKS 



of the skulls, and must enquire what the conformation of the cover- 

 ing skull can teach us of the conformation and character of the 

 contained brain. As I have already pointed out (p. 638), Huschke, 

 nearly a quarter of a century ago, stated of certain readily recog- 

 nisable landmarks on the skull, such as the frontal and parietal 

 tubera and the coronal and the lambdoidal sutures, that certain 

 equally definite and recognisable brain-convolutions would be found 

 to correspond with them. These important observations, owing 

 probably to their being mixed up with a vast mass of matter of less 

 precision and interest, failed to attract the attention which they 

 deserved, and a considerable number of investigators, including 

 myself ^ have subsequently to the appearance of Buschke's memoir 

 in 1854 examined the relation of brains and skulls in situ without 

 any knowledge of his precedence, but with the result of confirming 

 his statements. Of these there are two which are of eminent im- 

 portance for our present purpose, the one namely which allocates the 

 supra-marginal convolution of the brain to the parietal eminence in 

 the skull (see Huschke, Schadel, Hirn, uud Seele, p. 142) ; and a 

 second, according to which the internal perpendicular or parieto- 

 occipital fissure ^ holds a similar relation to the lambdoid suture 

 (Huschke, I. c. pp. 62, 142). For as I have already said (p. 637), 

 of all the peculiarities distinguishing the brachy-cephalic from the 

 dolicho-cephalic skull, at least in European races^ there is none 

 more important and more striking, even from a merely craniological 

 point of view, than the difference existing between them as to the 

 distance intervening between the plane of the parietal eminences 

 and that of the back of the skull. When however we come to look 



' Professor Broca in France, Professor Turner in England, M. Ferdinand Heftier 

 in Russia, and Professor Bischoff in Germany, have connected their names with this 

 investigation ; an account of their labours is given by Professor Broca in his memoir 

 * Sur la Topogi-aphie Cranio- Cerebrale,' published in the Revue d' Anthropologic, torn. v. 

 No. 2, 1876. 



^ Professor Turner (Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, Series ii. No. xiii. 

 Nov. 1873, p. 145) says that the ' exact distance of the parieto-occipital fissure from 

 the apex of the lambdoidal suture varies, jjartly from variations in the brain itself, 

 and partly from the not infrequent variations in the mode of ossification of the upper 

 squamous part of the occipital bone. About 0'7 or 0'8 of an inch will express its 

 average distance from the apex of that suture.' In this Professor Turner differs from 

 Ecker, Arch, ftir Anth. ix. 1876, pp. 72 and 76; and from Broca and Bischoff, citt. in 

 loco. Broca, in the Revue d' Anthropologic, tom. v. No. 2, 1876, says : ' La scissure 

 occipitale externe correspond assez ordinairement chez les adultes de notre race h. la 

 suture lambdoide, k quelques millimetres pres; toutefois eUe peut s'en ecarter 

 davantage, soit en dessus, soit en dessous.' These statements are mainly of importance 

 as bearing upon the variability of the occipital lobes, to which reference has been matle 

 above and will be also in the next note. 



