ON THE CRANI0L03Y OF THE BUSHMEN. 463 



this I have already commented in ' British Barrows,' pp. 706, note 1, 

 707, 716 \ ibique citata, comparing these lower jaws with the jaws 

 of certain other confessedly < priscan ' races, which differ from them 

 in little but in being larger in size. It is, or should be, a common- 

 place among craniographers that, whilst the lower jaw is a more 

 important bone for their purposes than any other single bone of the 

 skeleton, and even than the pelvis itself, it is often more dis- 

 tinctive, if not more valuable, than at least the entire calvaria. 

 Certainly this is the case with African skulls ; for though it is 

 possible enough, as was long ago pointed out by Professor Owen 

 (see ' Osteological Catalogue, Royal College of Surgeons of England,' 

 53$5> P- 8 3 8 > l8 53; an d> for a contradictory statement, Retzius, 

 'Ethnol. Schriften,' 1864, p. 149), and has recently been reaffirmed 

 by Dr. Hamy in Paris, to find brachy cephalic skulls among those of 

 undoubted Negro races, and though, as I can aver from my know- 

 ledge of the collections in the Oxford University Museum, it is by 

 no means always possible to distinguish either such braehycephalic 

 Negro skulls, or certain other Negro skulls of the dolichocephalic 

 type more usual amongst such skulls, from Bushman skulls of the 

 respective proportions, both of which are represented in this latter 

 series, it is within my knowledge always possible to do this if the 

 skulls under comparison are in possession of the lower jaws belong- 

 ing to them. The Negro's lower jaw may or may not have the 

 poorly-developed chin so constant in the lower jaws of the Bush- 

 man, and but rarely seen in the lower jaws of higher races ; it may 

 or may not have its anterior teeth sloping forwards in correlation 

 with a prognathic upper jaw ; it may or may not, I apprehend, 

 though I have not met with such cases, be as a whole as small and 

 feeble as the jaws of the Bushman have, to my knowledge, in- 

 variably been; but it never has shown, so far as I know, the low 

 coronoid process, the shallow sigmoid notch, and the wide ramus so 

 very commonly, or indeed all but invariably, found amongst not 

 only the Bushman but the Eskimo race. The existence of this 

 peculiarity not only in these two races so widely separated in space, 

 though so nearly on a level in certain linguistic as well as certain 

 other points of degradation, but also in so many of the lower jaws 

 of the earliest representatives of our species, gives it a great mor- 

 phological importance ; and this morphological importance is not 

 1 See Article XVI. pp. 308 et seq. of this volume. 



