UPON THE SERIES -OF PREHISTORIC CRANEA. 295 



Silurian skulls exhumed since 1865, only been able to add the 

 skull of one adult, this one being the skull of the single skeleton 

 found undisturbed in the long barrow at Upper Swell, as described 

 by me (Article XVIII) ; and one skull of a child of about 7 or 8 

 years of age, being one of the children found in the chamber of the 

 long barrow at Eyford, described in ' British Barrows,' p. 518, and 

 ' Journ. Anth. Institute,' Oct. 1875, p. 158. Coupling these facts 

 on one side with the well-known fact of the extreme rarity of the 

 persistence of this frontal prolongation of the sagittal suture in the 

 skulls of modern savages * ; on another side with the fact that this 

 suture persists with comparative frequency in the skulls of brachy- 

 cephali as observed by His and Riitimeyer in the skulls of their 

 ' Disentis Typus' (' Cran. Helvetica,' p. 27), and by Dr. Thurnam 

 and myself in the skulls of the bronze and later periods ; and on 

 a third with the fact that frontal bones with a persistent suture 

 are all but invariably broader than allied skulls not bifid, we may 

 feel ourselves justified in considering the extreme rarity of this 

 suture in Silurian skulls as another indication of their inferiority 



1 This suture persists in a skull of an Andaman Islander presented to the Oxford 

 Museum by Professor Wood Mason of the Indian Museum, Calcutta ; it has been noted 

 in an Abyssinian skull by Zuckerkandl, 1. c. p. 65 ; it is seen in the figure of a skull 

 given by Professor Busk (' Natural History Review,' April, 1861, pi. v. p. 174) of a Red 

 Indian from an ancient burial-place in Tennessee, in which skull, Professor Busk informs 

 us, 'the supra-orbital prominence is most marked of all the crania in our possession ;' 

 and fourthly, it is seen in the figure of the skull treated of by Professor Broca in his 

 paper (in the ' Bulletin de la Societe" d' Anthropologic de Paris,' Aout, 1871), ' Sur la De- 

 formation Toulousaine du Crane,' of which we find it recorded that ' l'os frontal est tre3- 

 petit dans toutes ses dimensions.' But though small frontal bones may occasionally 

 retain this suture, there is no doubt that it is much more usually found in broad fore- 

 heads, and that the rationale of its formation lies in the early widening of the frontal 

 lobes of the brain, of the segments, that is, of that organ which are most indubitably 

 shown (see p. 275 supra) to increase in complexity and extent with increase of intel- 

 ligence. This principle was laid down in the year 1740, by Hunauld in the ' Me'moires 

 de 1' Academic royale de Paris,' p. 371; it has been reaffirmed by Dr. Theodor Simon, 

 to whom I owe the foregoing reference, in an excellent though short paper in 

 ■ Virchow's Archiv,' torn. 58, 1873 ; by Virchow himself, 1. c, torn. 13, 1858 ; 'Abhand- 

 lungen Akad. Wiss. Berlin,' 1876, « Ueber einige Merkmale niederer Menschen-Rassen 

 am Schadel,' p. 112, ibique citata ; and by Hyrtl, ' Lehrbuch der Anatomie des 

 Menschen,' 8th ed. 1863, p. 245. Welcker's views (given in his • Wachsthum und 

 Bau des menschlichen Schadels,' p. 99) as to the hereditary transmission of this 

 peculiarity are confirmed by the presence of it in four out of the sixteen skulls 

 recovered by me from the Dinnington tumulus. In two of these not mentioned by 

 Dr. Thurnam the traces of the suture are only rudimentary ; and in none of the four 

 does it reach the inner table, which it does however in the Rodmarton and in the 

 Upper Swell crania, both also in this Museum. 



