UPON THE SERIES OF PREHISTORIC CRANIA. 311 



feriority, that, namely, which is constituted by diminution of the 

 height of the skull, absolutely as well as relatively to its long and 

 transverse diameters, is not usually noticeable, except in the female 

 skulls of the dolichocephalic long-barrow race. To this may be 

 added that in the series from the Caverne de l'Homme Mort, 

 belonging to an early period of the neolithic age, Professor Broca 

 found the height of the female actually exceeding that of the male 

 skulls in the proportion of 132 millimetres to 131. 



If we miss in these neolithic crania the diminution of the height 

 of the skull which Professor Busk has, under the name of f tapeino- 

 cephaly,' noted in certain modern savages, we look almost equally 

 in vain amongst them for a fourth point of degradation, the elonga- 

 tion, to wit, of the basicranial axis ; a peculiarity which Professor 

 Cleland has rightly insisted upon ('Phil. Trans. 5 1870, p. 124) as 

 being strikingly and remarkably characteristic of uncivilised nations 

 as distinct ethnographically as the Esquimaux, the Kafirs, and the 

 Caribs. 



I have already (p. 236 *) noted that the basis cranii in these 

 ancient crania has never been found by me to have suffered from 

 that pathological degradation which is known as the ' plastic de- 

 formation ' of Dr. Barnard Davis, the ' basilar impression ' of Vir- 

 chow, the ' impressio baseos cranii ' of other authors. 



The nasal index, which fails to separate the Eskimo from the 

 civilised races, fails equally with the long-barrow skulls, and, as has 

 been pointed out by Professor Broca ('Rev. Anth./ 1873, ii. p. 19), 

 with other prehistoric European skulls. On the other hand, the 

 orbital index, which does put the prehistoric crania from Cro- 

 Magnon and the Caverne de Y Homme into a position of similarity 

 to skulls such as those of the Tasmanian, Australian, and Melanesian 

 races, puts the neolithic skulls of British barrows into a position of 

 superiority as compared, not merely with the modern savages just 

 mentioned, but even with the skulls of the bronze period. As 

 regards these latter skulls however, it should be remarked that the 



1 The references made by me elsewhere (pp. 289-298 supra) to this interesting 

 pathological change were made merely for the sake of illustration. Dr. Barnard 

 Davis's paper was read before the Anthropological Society of Paris, June 5, 1862, 

 and may be found in « Mem. Soc. Anthrop. de Paris,' torn. i. p. 380. Subsequently a 

 memoir upon the subject was published by Dr. Boogaard in the * Nederland Tijdschrift 

 voor Geneeskunde,' 1865, 2. p. 81, an analysis of which by Dr. W. D. Moore appeared 

 in the 'Journal of Anatomy and Physiology,' Nov. 1866, p. 179. 



