CASTLE CARROCK. 199 



that this skull belonged to a man much ' past the middle period of 

 life,' if not to an ' aged ' man. The still outstanding muscular and 

 other processes in the lower part of the skull and the still powerful 

 lower jaw show that the owner of this skull was a person of con- 

 siderable strength ; whilst the general rounding off of the angular 

 portion of the vault of the skull seems referable to the working of 

 senile absorption. The diploic sinuses are exposed on either side in 

 the region of the parietal eminences, as is the case in advanced 

 senile atrophy; the cavities exposed are undoubtedly larger than 

 they would, in almost any circumstances, be until some time after 

 the prime of life; the skull however has suffered somewhat from 

 water-wear, and it is not easy to be sure that some of the excavation 

 and exposure shown in the drawing on the left parietal bone may 

 not be due to this posthumously working cause. The down-growth 

 of the occipital condyles, and of the mastoids, and the spiny 

 roughnesses developed generally at the base of the skull, and 

 specially around the posterior border of its foramen magnum, are 

 points indicative of its advance in age. A somewhat similar skull, 

 from Tosson in Northumberland, presented to the University 

 Museum by Canon Greenwell, has been described by Dr. Barnard 

 Davis in the ' Crania Britannica,' vii. PI. 54 ; its sex however 

 does not seem to be quite so certainly male as that of the skull 

 from Castle Carrock, and its age to be a little greater, as is also its 

 cubical capacity, 97-5 as against 95 cubic inches. The two skulls 

 are specially useful as showing the modifications, especially in the 

 way of rounding 7 off of outlines, which the advance of old age 

 produces upon tte more capacious brachycephalic skulls, which 

 when young might have been spoken of as ' tetes carrees,' ' sub- 

 cubical,' or ' subquadrate.' Both of them have retained compara- 

 tively vertical foreheads and the characteristic dip of a slightly 

 asymmetrical parieto-occipital region, the Castle Carrock skull in 

 company with a powerful lower jaw, and the Tosson skull in 

 company with a feebler one ; both have their points of maximum 

 transverse width low down upon the parietal bone, both have 

 vertical pterygoids; but the lateral bulging produced by senile 

 change has advanced further in the Tosson specimen, and the plane 

 of maximum width has advanced further forwards relatively to the 

 long axis of the skull. Some of the peculiarities to be seen in the 

 norma basalis and lower jaw of the Castle Carrock skull are very 



