396 SCIENCE FROM AN EASY CHAIR 



skull (Fig. 81) and of an ordinary European human skull 

 (take the Cromagnon skull as equivalent, Fig. 75) placed 

 upright, so that the eyes are looking forward. If in an 

 outline or photograph of each of these skulls you draw a 

 straight line from a point between the eyebrows back 

 to a point just below the most projecting ridge of the 

 hindermost region of the skull, you will find that above 

 that line in the monkey's skull is a slightly curved surface 

 the roof of the brain-case. But in the human skull 

 above the similarly drawn line the roof bulges so as to 

 form an almost hemispherical dome, rising sometimes 

 vertically in the front region to form " the straight, high 

 forehead " (which Shakespeare commended, even in 

 woman). It swells out in the hinder region also. Now 

 the Neander skulls, and to a less extent the skulls of 

 many of the Australian aborigines, are more like the 

 monkey's in this matter ; the dome of the roof is shallow 

 and flat, and the forehead does not rise up, but slopes 

 backwards, so that the whole contents of the brain-case 

 are lessened by the reduction of the frontal and upper 

 region. And there is reason to consider this frontal 

 region of the brain as specially connected with some 

 of the higher intellectual qualities of the mind. 



We know a little more about the skull of the 

 Neander race since Huxley wrote, owing to the further 

 discovery of specimens. The Australian's skull has 

 usually a more projecting upper jaw and upper front 

 teeth than has the Neander Man's. The Neander skulls 

 stand alone in the great breadth of the orbits and of the 

 nasal region as compared with all known skulls. They 

 are also alone (the Gibraltar skull and the new French 

 specimen are the only ones which show it) in the contour 

 of the upper jaw. In other human skulls there is a broad 

 depression of the surface a nipping-in, as it were 

 behind the root of the canine tooth on each side. This 



