1322 



VARIETIES OF MANKIND. 



as characteristic. It is met with among in- 

 habitants of various quarters of the globe ; 

 but is nearly always associated with squalor 

 and destitution, ignorance and brutality. In- 

 stead of following an agricultural or pas- 

 toral life, the people among whom it pre- 

 vails are, for the most part, hunters, or 

 inhabitants of low marshy forests, dependent 

 for their supplies of food upon the chase, or 

 upon the accidental produce of the soil, and 

 but little advanced in any of the arts which 

 are characteristic of civilisation. Such is the 

 character of those aborigines of Australia, 

 and of certain islands of the Polynesian Ar- 

 chipelago, amongst whom the prognathous 

 type is presented almost, if not quite, as 

 characteristically as among the Negroes of the 

 Guinea coast. 



The skulls of some of these inferior races 

 have been asserted by Dr. JohnNeill * to pre- 

 sent a division of the articulating surface of 

 each occipital condyle into two facets, by a 

 groove or ridge ; which appears to ~be the 

 persistent indication of the fissure that 

 originally separates the basi-occipital bone 

 from the ex-occipitals. This character, how- 

 ever, is far from being constant in any one 

 family. Thus it was only found in 30 out of 

 81 African crania; whilst it presented itself 

 in only 4 pure Egyptian heads in Dr. Mor- 

 ton's collection, in 3 out of 105 skulls of 



aboriginal Americans, and in none of the 

 other 129 skulls of different nations whose 

 history was well known. Thus, although 

 more common among the African races than 

 in the others, and marking in them (like the 

 occasional persistence of the separate inter- 

 maxillary bone to a later period than usual) 

 a less complete development, yet its presence 

 in but little more than one-third even of the 

 Negro-crania, and its occasional existence 

 elsewhere, altogether destroy its title to be 

 considered a mark of separation between dif- 

 ferent branches of the human family. The 

 writer has looked for this character in at least 

 twenty African crania, without once meeting 

 with it ; the only skull which unequivocally 

 presented it being that of a Tasmanian female, 

 set. l<k Dr. Neill points out, also, that the 

 lower boundary of the anterior nares in the 

 Negro skull wants the sharp edge which is 

 found in the higher races ; and that this, 

 also, may be regarded as a retention of the 

 foetal type. This character, however, is at 

 least as strongly marked in Australians as in 

 Negroes ; and an approximation to it is 

 shown wherever there is a tendency to the 

 prognathous conformation. 



Of the pyramidal type. The most striking 

 feature in this type of cranial conformation, 

 which is best seen in the front and basal 

 views (figs. 811. 813.), is the lateral or out- 



Fig. 812. 



Fig. 813. 



Pyramidal Cranium of Mongolian race. (From a specimen in the Museum of the Royal College of 



Surgeons.) 



ward projection of the zygomatic arches ; this 

 is principally due to the peculiar form of the 

 malar bones, whose facial surface is very 

 broad and flat ; but partly, also, to that of 

 the zygomatic process of the temporal bone, 

 which forms a large rounded sweep. From 

 this peculiarity, in conjunction with the nar- 

 rowness of the forehead, it results that lines 

 drawn from the zygomatic arches, touching 

 the temples on either side, instead of being 

 parallel, or nearly so, as amongst Europeans, 

 meet at no great distance over the forehead, 

 so as to form, with the line joining their bases, 

 a triangular figure. The upper part of the 

 face being remarkably flat, the nose also being 

 flat, and the nasal bones, as well as the space 



* American Journal of the Medical Sciences, 

 Jan. 1850. 



between the eyebrows, being nearly in the 

 same plane with the cheek-bones, the trian- 

 gular space bounded by these lines may be 

 compared to one of the faces of a pyramid. 

 This, however, is by no means the most im- 

 portant peculiarity of this type; for the 

 shortness of the antero-posterior diameter of 

 the cranium, in relation to the lateral, is, as 

 pointed out by Professor Retzius, at least 

 equally characteristic. Thus the average length 

 of sixteen Laplander's skulls measured by him 

 was about 6*90 inches, while the average 

 breadth was as much as 5'78 inches ; making 

 the proportion of the former to the latter 

 no more than 1'20 to 1-00. The greatest 

 longitudinal dimension among all these skulls 

 was only 7'08 inches, while the greatest late- 

 ral extension was as much as 6' 16 inches j 

 thus reducing the proportion to 1*15 to TOO. 



