UPON THE SERIES OF PREHISTORIC CRANIA. 239 



us, we should find that the bronze brachycephali had been not 

 only the taller and stronger bodied, but also the larger skulled 1 

 and larger brained race of the two. The well-filled character of 

 the typical brachycephalic skull is nowhere and no way better 

 shown in a single view of it than in the norma occipitalis, where 

 in spite of the well-developed tubera parietalia it is rare for any 

 very marked convergence of the lateral walls of the pentagon to 

 be observable. 



The forehead of a brachycephalous skull is sometimes vertical, 

 sometimes, and especially in cases where the whole skull and 

 skeleton are marked by great strength or even ruggedness, it is 

 markedly sloping. It has been well remarked by Professor Cleland, 

 1. c. pp. 163 and 138, that it is c a grave mistake to predicate 

 deficient development of the anterior lobes of the brain from a 

 retreating forehead or great development from a vertical forehead 

 without reference to the rest of the form of the head.' And in a 

 preceding page (p. 160) he has pointed out that to secure the 

 balancing of the head on the vertebral column, when the anterior 

 lobes of the brain and the bones of the face increase in weight, 

 without any unnecessary or constant call upon muscular force, 

 a certain amount of ' tilting or rotation backwards ' is mechanically 

 necessary, and is physiologically effected. Another explanation 

 has been given 2 of the sloping of the forehead by supposing it to 

 be caused by increase in length of the basicranial axis, and a 

 consequent throwing forward of the lower half of the frontal 

 bone ; and, as Professor Cleland has himself pointed out, 1. c. p. 124, 

 a long base line is eminently characteristic of the skulls of un- 

 civilised nations. But though the operation of this cause may 



1 For the purposes of a comparison made upon such a basis it would be safe to take 

 the largeness of the skull as furnishing a measure of the largeness of the brain it 

 contained. The thickness of the skull-walls to be estimated by weighing the skull or, 

 by preference here, the calvaria, would probably not differ very much, and, if at all, to 

 the disadvantage, I incline to think, of the brachycephalic type. Allowance would of 

 course have to be made for any difference set up either by the removal of organic 

 matter or by the infiltration and deposit of inorganic salts of iron or of lime. It may 

 be true, as Professor Bischoff has shown, 1. c. pp. 36, 45, that extraordinary individual 

 variations in the brain- weight may be noted in brains from skulls with the same cir- 

 cumference, and that no fixed relation can be affirmed to exist between the variations 

 of brain-weight and those of cubical contents as measured by other than brain- 

 eubstance ; but this want of concomitance would be as likely to occur in the one as 

 in the other set of subjects of comparison. 



2 Welcker, ■ Wachsthum und Bau/ p. 76. 



