INTRODUCTION. 173 



head in the horizontal position, as pointed out by Professor Cleland, 

 'Phil. Trans.' 1870, p. 161. 



Of the several normae, the norma lateralis or profile view of a skull 

 is the most important, giving as it does, firstly, the most character- 

 istic view of the upper and lower jaw, secondly, the relation of 

 height to length, and, thirdly, the picturesque peculiarities of the 

 antero-posterior curve of the cranial vault 1 . The upper contour 

 line, in fact, of a brachycephalic skull viewed in profile, dipping 

 away, as it does, more or less abruptly downwards in a plane but 

 a little posterior to that of the parietal tubera, distinguishes such a 

 skull from dolichocephalic forms as sharply as the proportion seen, 

 in its vertical norma, to be borne by its transverse to its longitu- 

 dinal diameter. The possession in fact of such a contour line may 

 justify us in considering a skull to belong to the brachycephalic 

 division and in speaking of it as ' brachycephalic by contour,' even 

 though its extreme breadth may bear a less favourable ratio than 

 that of 80 to 100 of its extreme length. 



It may be well to state here that the ' precipitous sinking' away 

 of this contour line is very frequently due to an abrupt curvature of 

 the parietal bones exclusively; and that, contrary to what has some- 

 times been laid down, the superior occipital squama may be ' full 

 and globular' in a brachycephalic skull, standing out in a plane 

 posterior to that occupied by the posterior portion of the parietals, 

 and constituting thus what has been called a ' capsulites Hinter- 

 hauptV 



Further, if it is incorrect to speak of flatness of the superior 

 squama occipitis as being characteristic of brachycephalic crania, it 

 is equally incorrect to say the like of the inferior squama forming 

 the conceptacula cerebelli, or to say that tumidity of this region is 

 characteristic of female skulls. For male brachycephalic skulls 

 very frequently have their conceptacula cerebelli prominently convex 

 outwardly, as the great relative and absolute height of such skulls 

 and the great downward pressure of their cerebral hemispheres 

 would have led us to expect. 



1 Cleland, 'Phil. Trans. 1870,' p. 145, and Ketzius, ' Ethnolog. Schriften,' pp. 118- 

 121, cit. in loco. 



2 Virchow, ■ Archiv fur Anthropologic,' iv. 84, and note to p. 177 infra. 



